The New York Mets are amidst the stretch run, and it’s all hands on deck as the blue and orange look to return to October baseball. Like every team around baseball, the Mets are evaluating their internal options for help as they chase the ultimate goal of a World Series trophy.
The blue and orange have a couple of candidates to call up, but president of baseball operations David Stearns shot down one of those options on Friday.
Stearns shuts down calling up Brandon Sproat for now
Before the Mets’ 7-3 victory over the Miami Marlins on Friday, Stearns squashed the rumors of calling up new No.1 prospect Brandon Sproat:
“This is still a very new player to professional baseball, and he has moved very rapidly through our system, and he has earned that, and he deserves that,” Stearns said, “but I think we need to make sure that he also dominates the level he’s at now before we really start talking about what comes next.”
The Mets’ 2023 second-round pick has been stellar in his first professional season. Sproat has worked his way up from High-A Brooklyn to Triple-A Syracuse while pitching 95.1 innings across 19 appearances, 18 of which were starts, to a 2.55 ERA with a 1.007 WHIP and 115 strikeouts.
“I think he’s had about a good minor league season as you can possibly have,” Stearns said. “I think he’s thrown more strikes. He’s rounded out his arsenal. He’s improved his changeup. He’s competed at a very high level, very consistently. He’s bounced back from the occasional rough outing. So we’ve been very pleased with this development this year.”
What does this mean for the Mets?
This statement from Stearns doesn’t totally rule out a call-up, but it seems that the 39-year-old wants to be cautious with the organization’s top prospect. Time will tell what happens with Sproat, but all signs indicate that 2025 will be the year the flamethrower makes his big league debut.
