Christian Scott was the first of the Mets’ current crop of young minor league starters to make his MLB debut back in the summer of 2024. It says a lot about the strength of the Mets’ farm system that despite Scott getting Tommy John Surgery late in that year, as well as trading away three of their top starting pitching prospects in the interim, the Mets are still rich with young starting pitching. They’re so rich with starters that, despite being healthy, Scott is likely not to break club with the team
this year, and may not even be the first up from the farm this season.
This is no knock on Scott, who entered 2024 as the Mets’ #5 prospect who had a rocky, though promising, start to his big league career. Injuries can happen at bad times and send folks back down the line a bit.
That’s exactly what happened with Scott. A University of Florida product, Scott was drafted in the fifth round of the 2021 draft. His professional career was unremarkable until the spring of 2023 when in Brooklyn, Scott switched to starting and started (pardon the pun) to put it all together. In six starts for the Cyclones, Scott put up a 2.28 ERA with 27 strikeouts in 23.2 innings, while walking just four.
He was promoted to Binghamton later that year and continued to dominate. His 2.47 ERA in 12 starts complemented an 11.2 K/9 rate and just eight walks in 62 innings pitched. He began 2024 in Syracuse and in six starts looked strong, striking out 36 and walking just six.
A lot of Scott’s success came from his fastball(s), as described by our Steve Sypa:
Scott worked on his four-seam fastball during the Arizona Fall League and over the winter of 2022, and its emergence may be one of the reasons the right-hander was so good in 2023. Sitting in the mid-90s and topping out in the high-90s, the pitch is difficult for batters to square up on thanks to its speed and rising action. Additionally, Scott’s two-seam fastball was a solid pitch in its own right. Sitting in the mid-90s, the pitch has a lot of arm-side and sinking movement, making it difficult for batters to square up on. In and of itself, it is not so much a a swing-and-miss, bat-missing strikeout pitch as it is a weak contact pitch, eliciting weak fly balls as batters swing under it and ground balls as batters swing over it.
Scott made his MLB debut on May 4, tossing six and two-thirds innings against the Rays. It was Scott’s best start of the season in terms of length, run prevention, and walks allowed. His six strikeouts were his second best of the season, as well.
Scott didn’t pick up a win in his nine starts for the team despite a few quality starts for the club. But both in Triple-A and in the bigs in 2024, home runs were an issue. In 18 starts across the two levels, he gave up 18 home runs. For context, he only walked 24 batters in that same span. But before too much work could be done to limit his fly balls, Scott was placed on the IL in July and eventually had Tommy John, putting him out for the back half of 2024 and all of 2025.
None of that changes the hope that the Mets have for Scott, nor does the emergence of Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong. Our Lukas Vlahos summed up Scott nicely in his season preview for 2024:
As the first real development success of the Cohen era, Scott is something of an avatar for the Mets’ pitching development pipeline writ large, a product of the improved processes the team has spun up as they play catch up with the powerhouses of the sport. Scott succeeding won’t herald in a new age of Dodgers- or Rays-like pitching wealth on its own, but it would be a strong sign that the organization is moving in the right direction and that brighter days are ahead.
[Scott’s fastball] pitch 94, touches 98, has some of the best shape in the minors, and is further improved by Scott’s elite command of the pitch, a combination that arguably makes it the best heater in the minors. He lacks both the track record and the true standout secondary to stand among the elite pitching prospects on stuff alone (Paul Skene’s slider, Drew Thorpe’s changeup, Hurston Waldrep’s splitter, Jackson Jobe’s slider/changeup), but a conservative projection still has him as a near MLB-ready mid-rotation starter. Squeeze another jump out of one of the secondaries and you’re looking at a legitimate #2 rotation option.
If Scott can come back healthy with the same control and fastball that he had in 2024, he’s going to be a part of the Mets’ plans for 2026 and beyond. If he can limit the long ball, he’s going to be a major part of them. And if he doesn’t, the way the team is constructed and the farm system operating, it won’t be the end of the world. That is a fantastic place for Scott to be in, without too much pressure weighing on him and a fantastic place for the club to be, without the need to push Scott before he’s ready and fully healed.
