By now you have probably heard of Brandon Sproat, the 2023 Mets draftee who has sky rocketed up the prospect charts over the last season or so. Going into 2025 he is the #61 prospect overall by Baseball America, #39 by Baseball Prospectus and #46 by MLB.com. He was one of the Mets representatives in the 2024 Future Games.
A fun trivia fact you’ll hear about Sproat often, especially during spring outings this year is he’s a rare three-time drafted player. The Rangers originally drafted him out of high school in the 7th round back in 2019. The Mets then drafted him out of the University of Florida in the 3rd round in 2022. He then went back to college and the Mets drafted him again in 2023, this time in the second round. The Mets clearly wanted Sproat.
Sproat is known as a flamethrower, with a four-seamed fastball that can touch 100 and lives in the upper-90’s. He mixes in a sinker, change slider, cutter and a curveball to round out a huge arsenal.
Last season was his first season of pro-ball and he pitched in games from Brooklyn all the way up to Syracuse. Across all three levels he pitched in 24 games with 116 1/3 innings with a 3.40 ERA and a 1.109 WHIP. He dominated in Brooklyn with a 1.105 WHIP and 1.07 ERA over 25 1/3 innings. He as striking out players at a healthy clip, 11.7 K/9 but his control was all over the place with a 5.7 BB/9.
Sproat’s dominating performance continued in Binghamton with a 2.45 ERA, 0.866 WHIP over 62 1/3 innings. He kept his strikeout rate high, 11.1 K/9 and got a better handle on his control, dropping his walk rate to 2.2 BB/9. It was in Syracuse where he hit a speed bump. His H/9 jumped from 5.6 in Binghamton all the way to 11.3 while his strikeout rate dropped to 6.6 K/9.
This sets up what we are looking for this spring from Sproat. Hitters in Syracuse were able to figure him out, can he start confuse them again? When he takes the mound this spring, we’ll be watching for:
- Batters making solid contact. Did Sproat figure out what was causing him problems in Syracuse? Is he now fooling hitters? Which leads to…
- His pitch selection. Without reading too much into it since pitchers work on specific things early on in spring training, he has a huge arsenal, how do the Mets help him curate it?
- Is there a position battle? The Mets have an open spot at the end of the rotation, but have a lot players on the 40-man roster competing for it. Does Sproat perform so well this spring that he forces a conversation.
For the Mets to consider Sproat out of camp two things are going to need to happen. First, he need to put on an amazing spring training campaign. Second, there needs to be a consistent spot in the rotation for at least a month. As long as he continues to take steps forward this season, we’ll see him with the major league club before the end of the year.
