The Mets made a number of moves ahead of this afternoon’s finale with the Reds. Most pressing, Brandon Sproat officially joins the MLB team to make his first career start this afternoon. Additionally, Reed Garrett has been reinstated from the Injured List and will join the team in Cincinnati as well. In corresponding moves, both Wander Suero and Kevin Herget have been optioned to Triple-A Syracuse. To make room on the 40-Man roster for Sproat, Justin Garza has been designated for assignment.
Sproat, Amazin’ Avenue’s top prospect heading into 2025, is the third highly touted rookie pitcher to make his MLB debut for the Mets in the last month, following Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong.
Here is what our Steve Sypa said about Sproat earlier this year:
Complementing his fastball, Sproat throws a slider, changeup, and curveball. Over the winter of 2023, the Mets worked with the right-hander to add a sweeping slider to his repertoire in addition to his almost cutter-like gyro slider, and not only did he take to the additional pitch quickly, but it improved his overall repertoire as a whole; his above-average fastball became an almost certainly plus pitch, his above-average slider became an arguably an above-average-to-plus pitch, and his above-average changeup became arguably an above-average-to-plus pitch. Only his curveball, which was a fringe-average offering, did not improve.
His slider is his main strikeout pitch, be it his upper-80 gyro variant with tight break or his low-to-mid-80s sweeping variant. Both pitches tunnel excellently with his fastball and fool batters, with short slice with his gyro slider to longer, more planar movement with his sweeper. His changeup sits in the mid-80s and tunnels well with his fastball as he maintains his arm speed well. While he is able to generate strikes and strikeouts with it, the pitch more often induces ground balls from weak contact. His curveball sits in the upper-70s-to-low-80s with 12-6 break, though sometimes it can get less top-down and become slurvy. While he can bury it below the zone for strikeouts, it is a soft, floaty pitch and is mainly used as a get-me-over offering.
The right-hander generally relies on his fastball to get ahead of batters and into two-strike counts. Against left-handers, despite having an excellent changeup, he generally relies on his fastball as his main strikeout pitch, switching to his slider and changeup at almost a half and a quarter of the time comparatively. Against right-handed batters, once he is in a two-strike situation, he uses his fastball and slider almost at equal percentages.
Garrett hit the IL on August 25th with ‘right elbow inflammation.’ After a fantastic start to his season, Garrett had struggled in August, having a particularly rough stretch from August 10 onward. While the Mets have been piecing together their bullpen with the likes of the three optioned/DFA’d pitchers, having an effective Garrett back in the relief corps should be a great thing for the Mets.
Suero, who the Mets claimed from the Braves off waivers last week, did not appear in a game for the Mets in his brief call up, so don’t use him as a Mets square in Immaculate Grid just yet. Herget, who has now been called up on four seperate occasions (as well as a one-game spell on the Braves), had looked good in short spurts until his last appearance on September 2, when he was simply gassed at the end of a two-inning appearance. Garza last appeared in a big league game on June 20th.
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