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With the rules no longer allowing teams to call up any player on the 40-man roster once Sept. 1 rolls around (instead allowing rosters to expand by just two players), the Mets, and every other team in the league, must be much more deliberate in who they decide to promote to the big leagues late in the season.
Of course, one of the players on everybody’s minds as to who New York should potentially bring up from the minor leagues is right-hander Brandon Sproat who has shot through the Mets’ farm system this year in his first season playing professionally.
President of baseball operations David Stearns spoke to the media before Friday’s game against the Miami Marlins about potentially calling up his top prospect for a late-season push.
“I don’t think I take anything off the table at this point,” Stearns said. “September call-ups is a little bit of a different animal now than it was a couple of years ago. It’s a two player expansion – one position player and one pitcher – so it’s not quite as robust as it was and really those calls are gonna be made by what the team need is at that particular point in time.
“Clearly, your roster isn’t frozen in September so it’s highly likely that whoever we call up on September 1st, those positions could rotate as we get through the month of September.”
Drafted in the second round (No. 56 overall) in the 2023 MLB Draft out of Florida, Sproat began his campaign this season with High-A Brooklyn where he quickly proved he did not belong, pitching to a 1.07 ERA in six games (five starts).
The 23-year-old was then promoted to Double-A Binghamton where he spent the majority of the season. In 11 starts, the Mets’ No. 5 overall prospect, per SNY’s Joe DeMayo, went 4-1 with a 2.45 ERA (0.87 WHIP) across 62.1 innings while striking out 77.
In fact, in his final start with the Rumble Ponies, Sproat struck out 13 batters, including the last 11 batters he faced, over five innings in his best performance of the season. He was promoted to Triple-A the following day.
With Syracuse thus far, Sproat has not found the same success that has followed him everywhere he’s gone in his career. Over two starts, the right-hander has an 8.22 ERA, allowing two home runs in 7.2 innings while walking five and striking out just six.
However, most of that came in his Triple-A debut as he was on his way to a much better outing in his second start before getting ejected after three innings for arguing with the home plate umpire.
“I think he’s had about as good a 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 his development this year.
“He just needs experience. 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, but I think we need to make sure that he also dominates at the level he’s at now before we really start talking about what comes next.”
While a call-up in two weeks isn’t necessarily out of the question, it’s fair to say that the Mets and Stearns are still looking for more out of Sproat.
And like Stearns said, even if Sproat isn’t promoted to the big leagues on Sept. 1 that doesn’t mean he can’t or won’t be promoted later on in the month if New York deems it worthy.
“The most important factor is what is the right fit for both the player and our major league team,” he said.