The son of Jason Gordon, a professional golfer, Robert Joseph Gordon pursued baseball instead of golf, playing at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California, in his first three years of high school
and then West Ranch High School in Stevenson Ranch, California in his senior year. He lettered twice at Notre Dame and in his one year at West Ranch, but his senior year got cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In his junior season in 2019, his last full season, the outfielder helped lead Notre Dame to a Mission League championship and a berth in the 2019 CIF Southern Division 1 Tournament by hitting .298//.459/.385 with two doubles, one home run, and three stolen bases. Gordon went undrafted in the 2020 MLB Draft and attended the University of Oregon.
Overview
Name: R.J. Gordon
Position: RHP
Born: 03/14/2002 (Age 24 season in 2026)
Height: 6’0”
Weight: 195 lbs.
Bats/Throws: R/R
Acquired: 2024 MLB Draft, 13th Round (University of Oregon)
2025 Stats: 15 G (11 GS), 67.2 IP, 60 H, 29 R, 23 ER (3.86 ERA), 31 BB, 76 K, .299 BABIP (High-A) / 11 G (10 GS), 61.0 IP, 53 H, 33 R, 25 ER (3.69 ERA), 15 BB, 71 K, .299 BABIP (Double-A)
When Gordon arrived at Oregon, he would have likely been cut from the Ducks baseball roster, but with the coronavirus pandemic still ongoing and the NCAA not forcing teams to cut their rosters until the spring of 2021, Gordon had time to work on his body and his baseball abilities, bulking up and working on his pitching. When the time came, Head Coach Mark Wasikowski elected to keep Gordon, impressed by his skill progression and mental fortitude. In his first season with the Ducks, he appeared in 14 games, starting three, and posted a 4.19 ERA in 19.1 innings, allowing 24 hits, walking 9, and striking out 20. He played for the Bent Elks of the West Coast Summer Collegiate League that summer and then returned to Oregon for his sophomore season. He began the season in their bullpen but transitioned into the weekend rotation in mid-March, roughly a month into the season, and spent most of the rest of the season as a starter. Appearing in 20 games and making 8 starts, Gordon posted a 5.64 ERA in 68.2 innings, allowing 75 hits, walking 34, and striking out 48.
In 2023, Gordon redshirted due to an UCL injury that required internal brace surgery to correct. He returned to the mound in 2024, his redshirt junior season, and was named the Ducks’ opening day starter. He made 17 starts and posted 5.13 ERA in 94.2 innings, allowing 92 hits, walking 46, and striking out 87, crediting pitching coach Blake Hawksworth for his success and helping shape him into not just a well-rounded pitcher, but a well-rounded person. In the thirteenth-round of the 2024 MLB Draft, the Mets selected Gordon and the two sides agreed to a $150,000 signing bonus a few days later, remaining below the threshold in which a post-tenth-round player’s bonus affects the team’s bonus pool. The Mets elected to not have the right-hander pitch for the remainder of the 2024 season.
His surgery and career-high innings load in the rearview mirror, Gordon began the 2025 season assigned to the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones. Appearing in 15 games, making 11 starts, the 23-year-old posted a 3.06 ERA in 67.2 innings, allowing 60 hits, walking 31, and striking out 76. He was promoted to Double-A Binghamton at the beginning of July and remained there for the rest of the 2025 season. Appearing in 11 games, he made 10 starts and posted a 3.69 ERA over 61.0 innings, allowing 53 hits, walking 15, and striking out 71. In total, he appeared in 26 games and made 21 starts. In the 128.2 innings he pitched, Gordon posted a cumulative 3.36 ERA, allowing 113 hits, walking 46, and striking out 147, his strikeouts tied for second-most in the system with Jack Wenninger, trailing only Jonah Tong.
The right-hander stands an even six foot and weighs 195-pounds. He throws from a three-quarters arm slot, dropping and driving off the mound and giving his pitches a flatter vertical approach angle. He throws a wide assortment of pitches and while not a true “the sum of all parts is greater than each individual piece” kind of pitcher, he is at his best when all of his pitches are working and he can keep batters on their toes guessing where and what the next pitch in his sequence will be.
His fastball sits in the low-90s, and even post elbow-surgery, he can still ramp it up to 96, 97 MPH, though he seldom does, rarely throwing above 95 MPH. Thanks to the spin on the pitch as well as the flat approach angle from his arm slot, the pitch gets above-average vertical induced break readings. It also has a little bit of natural cutting action to it and has generally been tougher for left-handers than right-handers over the course of his college career as well as his time on the mound as a professional.
Key to much of his success in 2025 was his changeup, a pitch that he developed during spring training. The “kick” grip that he began using felt very natural and the pitch quickly came to him, developing into arguably his best offering. Sitting in the low-to-mid-80s, the pitch has sharp downward movement without the horizontal fade that most traditional changeups have. The pitch was outright dominant while in High-A, resulting in a nearly 40% whiff rate.
He complements his fastball-changeup combo with a slider and a curveball, both of which are solid average offerings, occasionally flashing above-average at times. His slider sits in the mid-to-high-80s with gyroscopic break and his curveball sits in the mid-70s with slight 12-6 break. He can locate both pitches inside and out of the strike zone, but both currently lack the bite to be true weapons.
All in all, Gordon rose to the occasion in the face of more difficult competition. The right-hander had a handful of slightly concerning red flags in his batted ball data that were somewhat masked over in the pitching-friendly Maimonides Park, but when promoted to the more neutral Morabito Stadium in Binghamton showed improvements. In roughly the same amount of innings against more advanced Double-A batters, Gordon improved on his strikeout rate (26.0% to 28.7%), walk rate (10.6% to 6.1%), strikeout-walk rate (15.4% to 22.7%), groundball rate (32.8% to 40.1%), flyball rate (41.2% to 34.4%), Contact% (73.3% to 67.8%), Swing% (47.1% to 50.0%), and SwStr% (12.6% to 16.1%).
2026 Mets Top 25 Prospect List
17) Chris Suero
18) Dylan Ross
19) Ryan Lambert
20) Antonio Jimenez
21) Edward Lantigua
22) Eli Serrano III
23) Randy Guzman
24) Daiverson Gutierrez
25) Boston Baro
