The narrative about the Mets over the last couple of seasons, by people who don’t follow the Mets, is that the farm system lacks pitching prospects in the upper levels. The Mets actually have several arms at the upper levels of the minors that could be breaking through as soon as this year. This crew includes Dominic Hamel, Mike Vasil, Blake Tidwell and the focus of today’s article, Christian Scott.
Christian Scott is the first pitcher in that group that is starting to buck the trend of Mets pitching prospects being ignored. He landed as the #99 prospect on ESPN’s top-100 list a few weeks ago and #88 for Baseball Prospectus.
The Mets drafted Scott in 2021 out of Florida where he was mostly used as a reliever and have used him as starter and reliever over his time in the minor leagues. Scott had a solid introduction in 2022 between St. Lucie and Brooklyn where he posted a 4.45 ERA over 18 games, nine starts, with a 58 2/3 innings. In 2022 he had a solid K/9 at 11.8 but gave up a lot of hits (9.4 H/9) leading to a 1.415 WHIP.
Then last year happened, which is why he has seemingly shot out of no where. Last season the Mets fully converted Scott into a starting pitcher. Scott played over three levels last year, spending most of his time in Binghamton where he made 12 starts. Over his 19 total starts he logged 87 2/3 innings with a 2.57 ERA and a 0.856 WHIP. He kept his strikeouts constant (11.0 K/9) while slashing his hits and walks around (hits down to 6.5 per nine innings, walks dropped from 3.4 to 1.2 BB/9). That’s definitely going to turn heads.
MLB Pipeline notes that he has a mid-90’s fastball, a low-80’s slider and a changeup. They note that he learned his slider from watching videos of Max Scherzer pitch.
Scott has clearly grown while in the Mets system, his next challenge is endurance. Because he was used mostly as a reliever, he only tossed about fifty innings in 2019 and then again in 2021. He almost got to 60 innings in his first season with the Mets where he was split between a starter and a reliever. Last year he almost got to 90 innings. If Scott comes out of spring training demolishing batters in Syracuse, he’s going to force the Mets to consider calling him up. In that scenario, do the Mets cap his innings?
This spring we are looking for two things with Christian Scott. First, once he gets a few games under his belt, do his spring strikeout/hit/walk numbers resemble 2023 or 2022? Second, how is he using all of his pitches? Are they all effective?
Scott rocketed up the Mets system last year, here’s hoping that rocket continues to rise in 2024!
