Mets' Christian Scott relying on teammates' advice before his first start at Citi Field
New York Mets pitcher Christian Scott at Citi Field on Friday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Christian Scott’s reputation precedes him. He knows that. The Mets know that. The fans who probably will pack Citi Field in his home debut Saturday definitely know that.
But though there’s undeniable pressure with being the next big thing, especially in this city, Scott seems to be approaching it with the same calm resoluteness that typified his electric first few months in Triple-A.
The goals remain the same, even against a big, bad Atlanta lineup: Pound the zone with the same nasty fastball that gave the Rays fits last week, mix in that sweeper and slider, walk almost no one, induce soft contact and keep hitters in the park.
Easy, right?
(OK, no — not easy, but after throwing 6 2⁄3 innings of one-run ball in his MLB debut, he at least made it look that way.)
“I’m just trying to control everything that I can — trust my routine, my preparation and just go out there and see what happens,” Scott said Friday, adding that his dad, aunt and a few family members from Boston plan to be in attendance.
“They haven’t seen me pitch, I don’t think,’’ he said, “so hopefully they can come down and watch and I can give them a show, so that’ll be fun.”
It’s not that Scott is naive to the realities of pitching in New York. He’s been talking to Luis Severino about navigating the highs and lows of pitching in a city in which mistakes so often are magnified. He’s also amped up his pregame preparation, turning to Francisco Lindor for advice on opposing teams, and adopted Sean Manaea’s habit of going through video twice: once while the emotions of the outing are fresh and again with a more analytical eye. The approach helps create balance, Manaea said.
“He’s very studious and wants to learn and obviously, he’s very, very talented, so I think, combine the two and you’ve got a recipe for success,” Manaea said Friday, expounding on his own video routine.
“[With] video work, you can get lost in it and get lost in the minute details,” he said. “You can go down such a long rabbit hole. The way I view it is, when your emotions are still fresh and raw after an outing, that’s a good way to see where you were in the moment in that outing.
“Then, you go back after that, after you’ve processed everything, and look at it from an objective lens . . . All right, I gave up five runs but I also made some great pitches that could have gone either way.”
It helps, though, that the lights have yet to shine too brightly for Scott to handle. Granted, his MLB debut was at Tropicana Field in front of a crowd of 18,969, but there were plenty of Mets fans there, he noted.
With the Mets’ game on Wednesday in St. Louis postponed, his start was moved back a day, meaning he got the benefit of watching Jose Quintana pitch against Atlanta on Friday night before getting a crack at one of MLB’s best-hitting teams.
With Triple-A Syracuse, Scott said he liked to rely on Hayden Senger — Syracuse’s light-hitting, defensively dominant catcher — for scouting reports.
Here?
“Now we’re looking at hot zones, reading swings, looking at video, looking at what opponents attack and what they like to hit,” he said. “[I want to] use my strengths but also try to exploit their weaknesses throughout. It’s a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game out there.”
And above all, it does seem that he wants to prove to the Flushing faithful that their trust in him is not misplaced.
“The only thing that’s going to be different is that the Mets fans are going to be here, so I’m excited to go out there and compete and try to win a ballgame,” he said. “I’m excited to pitch for them. They’ve been great to me coming up. It was my dream ever since I got drafted here to pitch in front of them, so I’m going to go out there and give them everything I’ve got.”
Manaea, for one, is a believer.
“He seemed pretty poised in Tampa,” he said. “I don’t think he needs to be doing anything other than that — just keep doing that and he’s going to be really good for a really long time.”
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
