The Rockaway Wave
Originally Published June 5, 2026
There’s one thing you can’t teach in baseball: throwing left-handed. It’s one of the most valuable traits in the game. In 2025, lefties had an ERA over half a run lower than righties — the largest gap ever.
While there are many prominent hard-throwing lefties, in general, southpaws generally throw a bit softer for righties. The average fastball for an MLB righty in 2026 is 95.1 mph, compared to 93.4 mph for lefties. So, when a lefty does have plus velo, he stands out.
Daviel Hurtado is one of those guys.
“I mean, he’s a lefty that throws 94 to 96,” Cyclones pitching coach Luis Alvarado said. “Nasty slider that he throws in the upper 80s, and a nasty curveball. He’s been working on the changeup, but he’s a guy that attacks the zone, and when you have that plus the stuff, you’re a special pitcher.”
Hurtado was recently promoted from Single-A St. Lucie, which means there is publicly available data on his arsenal from the first seven-plus weeks of the season. His fastball is up over a full tick to 94.3 mph, and his slider is also up nearly a full tick to 87.1 mph. Both marks would be above average among MLB arms, and he’s just 21 years old.
Alvarado said he thinks he could have more velocity gains to come as well.
“He’s a very skinny dude, but his strength and conditioning group and nutrition have done a really good job with him,” he said. “As long as he puts in the work, eating well, going to the gym, and staying healthy, I think velocity is gonna keep increasing.”
The slider is a pitch that Hurtado has developed since signing with the Mets in 2024 after initially coming in with just a fastball and curveball.
“It’s been a long process,” Hurtado said through Alvarado, who was acting as translator. “Getting the shape first, then after that, getting the velocity, and then getting the confidence to throw it with two strikes, and then working on the part of getting it in zone.”
Alvarado said the fastball-slider combo is now his bread and butter, and the velocity on the slider helps it play off of his fastball. Hurtado echoed that sentiment, saying those are the two pitches he is most confident in.
The curveball is still there, and it’s a prominent piece of his arsenal. It’s a pitch Hurtado said he feels very comfortable with, and it returned great results in a small sample size in St. Lucie this
season. He threw 43 curveballs in nine innings, running a 63% chase rate and 46.7% whiff rate, both the top marks of any of his offerings.
As of now, it’s his second most-used pitch behind the fastball, but that’s likely to change as Hurtado continues to ramp up the usage of his slider. The curveball is used mostly versus righties, while the slider is used versus both sides.
There’s also the changeup, which is a pitch that’s still very much in the development stage. Hurtado said he’s been working on it for a while, but it’s a difficult pitch to learn.
“We have been exploring grips, and just, it’s a feel pitch,” Hurtado said. “You always hear that from pitchers, it’s a feel pitch, and getting a feel pitch to work is usually a little more difficult than like gripping a slider and saying throw it as fast as you can and let the grip work.”
Alvarado is high on it.
“It’s a nasty pitch, he’s just got to get a little more confidence in it,” he said.
Hurtado marries this arsenal with plus control, which is reflected in the drastic improvement of both his strikeout and walk rates. Between both Single-A and his first two appearances in High- A, Hurtado is running a 32.8% strikeout rate and just 3.1% walk rate. It’s the third-best K-BB% in the Mets’ system, and the best among any starting pitcher.
“You create the reputation that you’re going to be in the zone,” Alvarado said. “And, in the moments that you’re not, you’re still gonna get swings. … When you attack the zone, you force guys to swing, and then when you know that they’re gonna swing, then you can expand a little bit and you’re gonna get more chase. Walks are gonna go down because if you’re in-zone, you’re gonna get a little bit more action early in counts, and you avoid the 2-0, 3-0 counts.”
Hurtado is yet to give up a run in his 7 and 2⁄3 innings as a Cyclone, and he’s given up just three hits and one walk while punching out six. Stepping into a rotation that just lost standout Channing Austin to Double-A Binghamton, Hurtado is filling the vacuum.
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