The Rockaway Wave
Originally published May 17, 2024
This past week, MLB Pipeline updated its Top 100 Prospects list. It wasn’t a complete update, but several players who needed a notable adjustment to their ranking got moved up or down on the list.
Christian Scott, the 2023 Brooklyn Cyclone with a meteoric rise to the big leagues over the past 12 months, was the player who moved up the most in the rankings. Before the update, Scott came in at No. 100, entering the list just about two weeks prior due to Padres outfielder Jackson Merrill graduating. Now, he’s No. 58 — a jump of 42 spots.
Sam Dykstra, who is part of the team that puts together the Top 100 Prospects list and is in charge of the Mets Top 30 list for MLB Pipeline, gave the reasoning as to why.
“He’s one of my favorite arms of last year, because there’s something very clear that you can point to in his development,” Dykstra said. “It’s not just ‘oh, the results got better’ … he went from throwing that sinker to throwing that fastball, and all of a sudden, it was right in the zone.”
Scott ditching his sinker in favor of a four-seam fastball was just one of multiple changes he made to his pitch mix. He has a splitter that he improved on, a pitch that Dykstra said got better in the second half of 2023 when he was in Double-A. He also added a sweeper while still keeping his slider, which adds another breaking ball look.
The changes not only helped Scott jump to the No. 58 prospect in baseball, but he’s now No. 3 on MLB Pipeline’s Mets Top 30 Prospects list, a list he wasn’t even on to begin last season. He is now the top-ranked pitching prospect in the Mets system.
“It’s really interesting the layers of development that he’s added on,” Dykstra said. “That’s a roadmap the Mets can take to their other pitchers, and be like ‘hey, listen, if you lean into the data and listen to us, you could be the next Christian Scott.’”
The Mets have struggled to develop pitching since Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz all debuted between 2012 and 2015. Scott, who made his MLB debut a few weeks ago, now headlines a crop of pitching prospects the likes of which the Mets haven’t had since that group a decade ago.
It would be easy to point to the famous “David Stearns pitching lab” as the reason behind so many minor league pitchers emerging as legitimate prospects, but Dykstra also gave credit to the players themselves. One thing that stood out to him while speaking with Scott and former Brooklyn Cyclone Blade Tidwell is that this group of pitchers in the Mets system has been buying into analytics, and Scott completely remaking his arsenal is an example of that.
“I think they have the right group of guys to buy into that analytical approach, and they have the front office to do that now,” Dykstra said. “I think it’s just kind of the perfect meshing of those things.”
While Dykstra did say Scott is on a tier of his own when it comes to Mets pitching prospects, there are still a lot of interesting arms in the system — and many of them have pitched for the Cyclones in 2024.
Brandon Sproat, who recently earned a promotion to Double-A, dominated High-A hitters in the six games he pitched at the level. The 2019 Rangers 7th-round pick, 2022 Mets 3rd-round pick and 2023 Mets 2nd-round pick posted a 1.07 ERA (3 ER) and 1.11 WHIP with 33 strikeouts and 16 walks over 25 and 1⁄3 innings.
Dykstra said he isn’t surprised the Mets are moving him this aggressively through the system. Sproat pitched in four seasons at the University of Florida which makes him a bit on the older side for players coming out of the draft. He’s by no means old, but is about the age of the average player in High-A.
“He kind of should be dominating High-A, as weird as that is to say,” Dykstra said.
Sproat needed more of a challenge, Dykstra said, and that will happen at the next level. He compared Sproat’s trajectory to Scott, who in 2023 also pitched in six games for High-A Brooklyn before earning a Double-A promotion. Scott wound up finishing the year in Double-A and starting 2024 in Triple-A before quickly pitching his way onto the major league roster. As long as he stays healthy, Dykstra said a first-half debut in 2025 could be in the cards for Sproat.
Currently the No. 13 overall prospect and No. 4 pitcher in the Mets system, Sproat could jump some spots on the list by season’s end — especially over some who have gotten off to slow starts in 2024 like Mike Vasil and Kevin Parada.
“I think there is an arrow up next to Sproat’s name because of the start he’s gotten off to,” Dykstra said. “I’m not gonna say he’ll be top five by the end of the year, but getting him into that top 10, even once we add draft guys, I think that’s certainly a possibility depending on how he does in Double-A.”
In his first start in Double-A, Sproat picked up right where he left off in Brooklyn, tossing five scoreless innings with three hits, two walks and five punchouts. Overall, it lowered his season ERA to 0.89 over 30 and 1⁄3 innings, the second-lowest of any Mets minor leaguer to make a start in 2024.
Jonah Tong, the Mets 7th-round pick in 2022, currently holds the top spot. After dominating for Single-A St. Lucie with 18 and 2⁄3 scoreless innings with 36 strikeouts, Tong earned a promotion
to High-A after just four games. He continued his scoreless streak through his first start into his second before it was ultimately snapped at 26 innings.
The 20-year-old starter hasn’t been quite as dominant as he was in Single-A, but he’s still been good over his first three starts for the Cyclones. In 12 and 2⁄3 innings, Tong has given up three earned runs while striking out 15, though the walks are starting to appear again.
Command is the main concern with Tong, In 2023, Tong walked 22 batters in 21 innings between Rookie Ball and Single-A, but that still came with a whopping 38 strikeouts.
“I wonder what happens when he faces more experienced bats who can lay off that high fastball, because that’s a huge part of his profile,” Dykstra said. “Getting 20 inches of induced vertical break (IVB), which basically makes the ball look like it’s rising as it approaches the zone, Single-A hitters didn’t know what to do with that. They were swinging and missing a ton, and that helps with your walks.”
Aside from the fastball, Tong throws a slider, curveball and occasional changeup, and Dykstra said he likes the curveball the best. With the IVB that Tong gets on his fastball that makes it play so well up in the zone, having a sharp-dropping curveball pairs really well and helps make Tong a strong north-south pitcher.
He wasn’t on the Mets Top 30 list to begin 2024, which Dykstra said because he hadn’t pitched much and wasn’t very successful when he was on the mound. He was someone, however, who Dykstra said was on a list of guys to keep an eye on. Now, he’s up to the No. 20 spot, and could jump even higher at the midseason update.
The other headline arm that was supposed to be a big part of the Cyclones rotation in 2024 was Calvin Ziegler, who will now miss the entire season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
Dykstra described the injury as “tough to swallow” after Ziegler missed pretty much all of 2023 due to injuries as well. He listed Brendan McKay of the Tampa Bay Rays, who just recently got shut down again, and Matt Allan, who hasn’t thrown a pitch since 2019, as examples of pitchers who have suffered repeated arm injuries. When pitchers start to pick up arm injury after arm injury, Dykstra said, it becomes more and more of a concern.
Nolan McLean, the No. 19 organizational prospect, has probably gotten the most attention of any Mets minor leaguer to this point in the season — which is understandable considering he’s a two- way player. In fact, he’s probably the most prominent two-way prospect in the minor leagues.
However, it’s also pretty clear he’s a more advanced pitcher than he is a hitter. He’s by no means a bad hitter, he is actually No. 1 on the Cyclones in home runs and No. 2 in extra-base hits despite being No. 8 in plate appearances. His ISO is a team-best .311, and he’s currently hitting one home run about every 15 at-bats.
McLean hits the ball HARD, the issue is a lot of times, he doesn’t hit it at all.
Through Wednesday, his strikeout rate is 52.3%. It’s the second-highest K% of any minor-league hitter with at least 50 plate appearances. McLean, who has a .816 OPS, is the outlier among players who strike out around as much as he does. Of the top 10 players with the highest K% in
the minors, McLean is the only player with an OPS above .600. Of the top 30, he’s one of just three to have an OPS above .800.
Ultimately though, a K% this high is unsustainable.
“That’s not gonna play anywhere,” Dykstra said. “That’s difficult to make the case that he should climb the ladder, even if you can hit the ball as hard as you can and send it out like he does. It’s gonna be tougher and tougher to justify letting him hit.”
Where it gets interesting, Dykstra said, is when it’s time for him to move up to Double-A.
So far in six starts in High-A, McLean has a 3.00 ERA with 27 strikeouts over 24 innings. He has a slider with elite spin rates that might be a major league-ready pitch now and a fastball that can touch 98 mph on the radar gun.
He’s a starter right now, but Dykstra said he believes he probably ends up as a reliever due to only having two plus pitches and slightly below-average control. However, Dykstra also said there’s plenty of time for that to change.
McLean is only 22 years old, it doesn’t hurt to let him start all season and see if they can discover something in the pitching lab. If you asked Dykstra two years ago if he thought Scott would wind up as a starter or reliever, he would have said reliever for the same reason — only having two plus pitches.
His quickest path to the majors is likely as a pitcher only, especially if he does transition into a reliever and leans into the two-pitch fastball-slider combo.
“When you are a two-way player, one side of you might be High-A quality, and the other side of you might be Double-A quality,” Dykstra said. “And, as he’s mowing down batters like he has been on the pitching side for Brooklyn, it’s getting to the point where he, like Sproat, should see Binghamton. But, if you want him to hit still, the bat should not see Binghamton. So, either they have to hold him back some and not really let him develop on the arm side, or they have to drop the bat and let him pitch full-time and really let him take off.”
The 2024 season is only a few weeks old, so it would be premature to draw any firm conclusions at this stage. However, this is a decision that the Mets will have to make at some point, maybe even as early as this year if his arm stays this far ahead of his bat.
While McLean, even with his faults, has probably been Brooklyn’s most exciting hitter in 2024, there is a recent promotion from Single-A who has been making some noise.
Nick Morabito, a 2nd round pick by the Mets in 2022, is the No. 26 prospect on the Mets Top 30 list. He had a strong first professional season in 2023, hitting .306 with a .828 OPS split about evenly between Rookie Ball and Single-A.
In 2024, he earned a promotion from St. Lucie after hitting .397/.530/.513 over 24 games. Through his first six games for Brooklyn, he’s basically maintained that pace, going 9-for-23 with three doubles and a 1.003 OPS.
He doesn’t have the most power potential, but his approach has been his calling card. In 30 games in 2024, he has 22 walks and 22 strikeouts — a ratio you don’t see that often. He also has 16 stolen bases in 21 tries, one of four players in the Mets system to be in the double digits.
“He was somebody you thought would need time to develop, but that approach is working so well so far,” Dykstra said. “The bigger question for me is what is the power gonna be for him? But, he’s got speed for days, and I think that’s huge in the modern game, obviously, with stolen bases being up practically at every level. So if you have a decent approach, if you’re gonna get on base a bunch, and you can steal bags like he’s done so far, that’s becoming more and more valuable in today’s game.”
He just turned 21 years old on May 7, so he’s still at least a couple years out from the majors if all goes to plan, but he’s definitely a player to keep an eye on. With McLean splitting time between pitching and hitting, Morabito is probably the highest-profile full-time hitter on the Cyclones roster.
Until recently that title belonged to Mets No. 4 prospect Ryan Clifford, but he was just promoted to Double-A on the same day as Sproat.
Clifford’s promotion was a bit less obvious to see coming, as he hit just .216 with a .716 OPS and one home run in 31 games for the ‘Clones. That low-.200s batting average was accompanied by a low-.400s on-base percentage though thanks to 32 walks, one more than the number of games he played.
One of the biggest driving factors behind the promotion, as Steve Gelbs also said on the SNY broadcast earlier in the week, was to get Clifford out of Coney Island.
Maimonides Park is notoriously unfriendly to hitters, especially left-handers like Clifford. Most pulled balls from lefties are going right at the beach with strong winds working against them. It’s not just the beach either, Dykstra said the backdrop can also be tough for left-handed hitters, trying to hit with roller coasters in their line of sight past the batter’s eye.
His strikeout numbers aren’t nearly as high as McLean, but they’re still not ideal. Dykstra said he talked to Clifford about moving from Asheville, which is a very friendly hitters park, to Brooklyn after the trade which is the opposite, and that Clifford said it was an adjustment.
“I think it’s just, it’s not really suited for his skill set,” Dykstra said. “I am concerned about it, there’s no doubt about it, but he’s somebody who hits the ball so hard to begin with that you can live with a 25% strikeout rate. Sometimes that’s a little bit questionable, but given how hard the contact is usually for him you can live with that. So I think that will settle back a little bit down once he gets away from Coney Island.”
While Clifford is now at Double-A, Dykstra said he doesn’t believe his development will impact the Mets’ decision on whether to trade Pete Alonso at the deadline or if he makes it through the season, to re-sign him.
He acknowledged that there is a steep drop off for first basemen historically as they get older and lose a bit of bat speed, but also that Alonso is a cornerstone of the franchise.
“I wouldn’t put all my eggs in the Clifford basket yet until you see him at the upper levels,” Dykstra said.
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