11:45am: The Mets will indeed call up Sproat for his major league debut this weekend, per Chase Ford of MiLB Central. He’ll make his big league debut on Sunday. The Mets will need to open spots on the active and 40-man rosters for Sproat.
9:15am: The Mets have already called up two of the organization’s top three pitching prospects. Nolan McLean has taken the National League by storm, and Jonah Tong looked sharp in his MLB debut last week. The third member of their touted Triple-A trio could soon join them in the majors. SNY’s Andy Martino reports that righty Brandon Sproat is receiving “strong consideration” to make a start for the big league club in the near future.
A possible promotion for Sproat comes at the same time the Mets have been mulling a minor league stint for struggling righty Kodai Senga, who has a 6.56 ERA over his past eight starts (averaging just 4 1/3 innings per outing in that time).
That’s not as straightforward a decision as it might seem. The five-year, $75MM contract Senga signed when he came to MLB from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball stipulates that he cannot be optioned to the minors without his consent. It’s not expressly clear that the Mets have asked him about to accept an optional assignment, though Mike Puma of the New York Post implied as much yesterday when writing that the organization expects to know whether Senga would approve the move by this weekend. Puma added that one way or another, the organization expects Sproat to make his big league debut before season’s end.
Sproat, 24, was the Mets’ second-round pick in 2023. The former Florida Gators standout has had an up-and-down year in Triple-A. He struggled to an ERA north of 6.00 in April/May before dominating with a combined 2.22 ERA in June and July. Sproat alternated between quality starts and clunkers throughout August. He’s sitting on a 4.24 ERA overall, and he’s punched out 22.1% of his opponents against a 10.6% walk rate. Those numbers look far better if you toss out the first two months of the season; Sproat has a 3.13 ERA, 25.7% strikeout rate and 10.1% walk rate in his past 14 starts. He tossed seven scoreless frames against the Yankees’ top affiliate his last time out, fanning nine hitters against only two walks along the way.
The uneven nature of Sproat’s season, coupled with the influx of talent from this year’s draft, has dropped him down — or even entirely off — most top-100 lists around the industry. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel still lists him 83rd in the game, and Baseball America has Sproat at No. 98. Baseball America notes that his turnaround in Syracuse coincided with increased usage of his curveball, changeup and two-seamer, helping to diversify his repertoire and make him less predictable, as opponents had become too keyed-in on his four-seamer. The 6’3″, 215-pound Sproat is sitting 96.4 mph on that four-seamer this season, and both his changeup and slider draw above-average to plus grades from scouts.
While Sproat’s seemingly inevitable addition to the 40-man roster and his MLB debut will come after Sept. 1, he’ll still be eligible for postseason play. Any player in an organization prior to September is eligible for postseason rosters. Technically, the Mets would need to petition for him to be an injury replacement, but teams make this move every year. At times, we’ve even seen top prospects who weren’t on the 40-man roster at the beginning of September get selected to the roster in October make their MLB debuts in the playoffs (e.g. Shane McClanahan, Adalberto Mondesi, Alex Kirilloff).
Good clarification of the 9/1 eligibility rules. A lot of people don’t seem to understand that.
Yeah I was confused because I thought you had to be on the 40 man on 9/1 to be eligible for postseason but it’s only for newcomers
You do *technically* need to be on the 40 man roster prior to 9/1 to be eligible for the baseline playoff roster. However, injury replacements can be anyone who was in the organization prior to 9/1, and pretty much every team goes into the playoffs with 1 or 2 injured players they can “replace” in this way.
Mets still should have gone after Skenes. They have the prospects to get anyone they want.
Cherington does not want to be known as the guy that traded very young Paul skenes
The new age Matt Harvey, Noah Syndegard, Jacob Degrom trio! We can only dream for next year 🙏🏽 Mets need pitching badly! Also Carson Benge should be an exciting prospect call up next year or if he has a strong enough spring training he may take the CF job
You forgot Wheeler who is arguably the best of them all.
I think deGrom is still the best in terms of peak. But Wheeler will probably have the better career when it’s all said and done.
Depleting a top-3 farm system for a prime TJ candidate is not a great strategy
EXACTLY!!!!
It would be very LOLmets to send a scuffling 30-something starter down to Triple-A.
Your obsession with LOLmets says more about you then anything else.
They got trolled with LOLmets by the Washington Nationals after losing a series in D.C.
LOLChucky is more appropriate. 🤣
Chucky has Lil Bro Syndrome even though he’s a Yankees fan. It’s quite weird. He’s also a Jets fan, though, so maybe that explains it.
Intelligent people don’t insert NFL references into baseball content.
Chucky boy is a Jets fan. Makes a lot of sense. Miserable franchise leads to miserable people.
It would be more “LOLMets,” whatever that means, to keep starting a scuffling starter and expecting different results.
Bringing up Sproat is 100% the right move. He might still be green and inconsistent. But the 4 2/3-inning starts they’re consistently getting from Manaea, Senga, Holmes (even though Holmes is generally effective in his 100-pitch, 4 2/3-inning starts) have been killers. Sproat at least gives you a chance for a different outcome.
Exactly. He cannot possibly be worse than what they’ve been getting from Senga and Manea. It’s not mid season anymore- they’ve had their chance to turn it around and they failed (I suspect they’re both playing hurt). Kudos to Stearns for making the move
Why not? They have 3 guys in the rotation that can’t get through 3 innings right now without spotting opponents 5 runs or more
Thank you for your post. As you know, each and every MLBTR post about the Mets carries a mandatory “Three ridiculous exaggerations” requirement. You have satisfied the first of these. We appreciate your contribution.
Great job of explaining why they shouldn’t call him up and how this is a “ridiculous exaggeration”. I urge you to actually watch the Mets and take a look at their starters game by game logs before coming on here and acting condescending and holier than thou.
Oh, please. Yeah, they’re pitching poorly. No one is arguing that. But “can’t get through 3 innings right now without spotting opponents 5 runs or more” is an exaggeration. And you know it because you intended it to be. So don’t act offended when someone calls you on it. I’ve been through their game logs over the past few days, and I know what I saw. Holmes, Manaea, and Senga have, collectively given up 5 or more runs in the first 3 innings just 3 times in their last 19 starts.
Sproat needed a half a season to adjust to AAA. When he finally did, he pitched well for all of 6 games before inconsistency set in and he got pummeled in 2 of his last 4 games. Were they just bad days? Or is the league starting to figure out the adjustments he made in June? Neither you nor I can know the answer to that without watching him pitch every time out. And what about the lefties having a .783 OPS against him, and the fact that that has gone up, not down by 20 points over the last month?
Whether he would be better or worse than any of the pitchers they now have is pure speculation for a fan given the partial information we have.
Back in June there was an article on here speculating about the possible call-ups of Tong, McLean, and Sproat. People in the comments were mostly saying how these guys shouldn’t be called up at all this year and needed more time in the minors. Luckily Stearns and the front office were smart enough to call up McLean and Tong to give the Mets some much-needed quality starting pitching, something they haven’t had much of recently.
So if you know what you saw, it should have been as alarming to you as it clearly was to the Mets since they have now called him up. Obviously it’s speculation and do I expect him to burst on the scene like McLean has? No. But teams and their fan bases hear about these prospects for years so why not call up a 24 year old prospect who’s been touted as a potential starter for your team down the road and see what you have? Especially when your current guys are struggling and cant be trusted right now to go out and give you a quality start
They had to call them up Mate. Manaea and Senga never improved form their 1st few post=IL starts. They actually got worse. Desperate measures.
I don’t think that Sproat is ready and I’m not sure he’ll ever be a good major league starter. He doesn’t have good shape on his four-seam fastball, and as we’ve seen with Helsley and Stanek, that doesn’t bode well.
Helsley is tipping his pitches and was the top closer in MLB last year. What are you even talking about?
He’s been absolutely atrocious. He was great in the past, true, but he’s basically unusable right now. Will he even make the Mets’ postseason roster? I guess it’s possible but I would not want him pitching in an important spot. Helsley is looking at a one-year, prove-it contract this winter, and it won’t be with the Mets.
Could be a Graeme Lloyd situation with Helsley. The 1996 Yankees traded for left-handed reliever Lloyd, who was a solid left-handed reliever for the Brewers but then became completely unusable for the Yankees. The Yankees, seemingly on a hunch, put Lloyd on the postseason roster and he immediately turned it around, getting huge outs all postseason.
Maybe the same thing happens with Helsley. But Mets have to make the postseason first, and unless he starts to pitch better very quickly (which could happen, who knows) I wouldn’t want to take that risk.
If the Mets make the playoffs, I’d honestly rather see McLean and Tong start for them than the current crop of SP.
I’ve never seen anything like it where collectively an entire rotation struggles to get through even the 3rd or 4th inning.
Manaea seems to be pitching hurt, Holmes it seemed inevitable he’d be gassed from all the innings at this point, and senga went from dominant to not in the blink of an eye. Peterson was pitching like a borderline ace and then recently started getting blasted.
While I never trust the Mets just because it’s the Mets, the one big advantage of pitching these rookies in playoff games is other teams not having seen them. They truly could be the difference between going out in the first round vs going far in the playoffs.
I’ve thought Holmes should be bullpen bound for a while now and hopefully that ends up being the case, especially with Helsley being the massive bust he’s been.
If Tong has a few more strong outings I’d prefer to see McLean Tong Peterson in the playoff rotation, then go with whoever is hot from Manaea Senga Sproat
Let’s see how September plays out.
Put it this way, what was your Mets playoff SP rotation one month ago?
Let’s not get too carried away about a pitcher with a career 3.00 ERA. Once he gets some command back he will be back to one of the better pitchers in the league.
Recency bias is a disease.
So you taking 8 starts and saying he’s crap is better? You do realize hes only makes 15m a year and isn’t exactly shafting anyone.Thats being paid as a backend starter and middle of the rotation at best.
So the Mets want to take a chance on a pitcher who is really good HALF the time in AAA?
That means he’ll be awesome in MLB every time, 1/4th of the time.
They were lucky to win 2/3 to the Tigers. Their luck is running out.
Mets have played basically sub .500 for the better part of the year, so I’m not sure what luck you’re talking about.
But how were they lucky to win 2 out of 3 from Detroit when they smashed them the first 2 games offensively.
His overall numbers are meh but if you look at his game logs from the last two months, he’s been very good. Senga and Manaea have set a low bar lately so if he can give them 5-6 solid innings, they’ll gladly take it.
ASod, I assume you’re talking about Sproat. He was excellent for 6 games in mid-season. But oer the last four, he’s been great twice and gotten pummeled twice. And through it all, good or bad, lefties have been hitting him – .783 OPS against him that is 40 points higher than league average, and 20 points higher than that stadium.
Look how badly Bubba Chandler struggled this year in AAA. Then he finally got promoted and he’s had some good outings for the Pirates. On the hitting side Colson Montgomery has struggled mightily in the minors despite being a highly-touted prospect. Now he’s finally up and hitting homers all over the place. Sometimes these guys need a change of scenery when they’ve been held down in the minors for too long. Let’s see what Sproat can do. He can’t be much worse than what they’ve been getting from the veterans.
I don’t expect ace level performances from Sproat. But with Senga and Manaea struggling to even complete five innings, it’s obvious they had to try something else.
@Asod1975: I agree. With the way the offense has been clicking, if Sproat can give 5+ innings and 3 or fewer earned runs, it’ll be a success. He doesn’t need to be lights out, just eat some innings and keep the Mets in the game.
Well they only have to be lucky and win 13 games in October and November. So hopefully 4 teams cry about how lucky the Mets are like you just did. I’m sure there isn’t a team in baseball hoping to face the Mets offense right now.
Do it. If Senga won’t go to the minors he can pitch from the pen for the rest of the season. He might actually be effective from the bullpen. Can’t be worse than Helsley.
What the kookie said. Better to use Senga as a long man who can provide bulk innings in a bullpen game.
More hyperbole. No one called him Tom Seaver. And personally, I never saw him as the prototypical ace type pitcher. But the fact is that until a month ago, his results, when healthy, are very, very ace-like.
According to SNY, he’s starting Sunday
If you throw out his bad starts, he’s great!
“Mets fans acted like Senga was the next Tom Seaver”
Literally no one acted this way. This is trolling or an absurd straw man. Even at his best, in his rookie season when he placed 7th in Cy Young voting, he still had an issue with walks and going deep into games. No one on earth compared him with Tom Terrific.
“You may not believe it but that doesn’t make it untrue.”
I don’t believe it and just because you say it, doesn’t make it true. Prove it. Otherwise it’s 0/10 trolling, please try again.
Just stop, bro. You’re not even good at trolling.
As with Tong and maybe as with McLean, this might be a little premature, but who cares? It’s a playoff push, so let’s go! If you remove Sproat’s clunker when they tried him as a reliever, in his last 10 starts in AAA, he has a 1.79 ERA with 64 Ks in 55.1 innings. He throws up to 99 mph and he’d probably only get two more starts in AAA this year, anyway. Get him some MLB experience and see if you can catch lightning in a bottle. LGM!
DFA HELSEY for Sproat and DFA Stanek for Megill, let Sproat and Megill start and Holmes and Senga could go to the pen
These recent promotions from the Mets appear to be desperation moves to cling to postseason aspirations.
Maybe, but the plan for McLean and Sproat was to have them battle for a rotation spot next spring, anyway. McLean just advanced quicker than expected and the MLB results have been great so far. So his and Sproat’s timeline is just bumped up a few months.
Tong just pitched so well this year that they couldn’t ignore him. I don’t think they expected him to be MLB ready until late next year.
Blah blah blah
icecoldtake
YAAASSSS!! Finally!