Laura Albanese: Mets' Christian Scott showed exactly the type of fight needed to turn season around
Mets starting pitcher Christian Scott throws to the plate during the first inning of a baseball game against the Angels on Friday in Anaheim, Calif. Credit: AP/Mark J. Terrill
ANAHEIM, Calif. - The wait can be interminable.
From the moment a pitcher gets the Tommy John surgery diagnosis, to the months his arm is completely immobile, to the weeks repeating the same motions, day after day, hoping to reclaim the small movements that used to be second nature.
Christian Scott picked up online chess during those early days. He eventually had former teammate Drew Smith teach him about his cutter. But mostly he waited for the shot to return to the big stage he stepped onto in 2024 before getting yanked off by the ruptured UCL in his right elbow.
Scott finally got his shot on April 23, and it was a little bit of a nightmare. The bright side: He didn’t allow a single hit. The not-so-bright side: He didn’t make it out of the second inning, walking five batters and allowing a run before even these woebegotten Mets had seen enough.
That’s a lot for someone in his place to take. He’ll turn 27 next month — not old, but not young for a rookie — and he’s seen his major-league career interrupted by a significant surgery. One bad start is just one bad start . . . until you start to consider how many promising players have wilted under the suffocating possibility that failure is very much an option.
But “when he got punched, he punched back,” manager Carlos Mendoza said Friday. “I’m not surprised by it.”
Mendoza wasn’t talking about the 21 long months between Scott’s major-league starts. He wasn’t even talking about his return to a major-league mound after that disastrous start against the Twins last month.
He was talking about a single inning.
Scott, recalled after an ineffective Kodai Senga hit the injured list, made his second start of the year Friday and immediately got walloped, major-league-style: Mike Trout singled with one out and Jorge Soler blasted a hanging sweeper to the moon (more or less).
Everything this 11-21 team has shown us thus far indicated that this was all it would take. Scott had failed. Or he should have. But then he didn’t.
“I’ve given up homers before,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
Oh, that’s right.
Often during this early-season slog, it felt as if the Mets lost sight of the fact that not every setback is a death sentence. But Scott — as intense on the mound as he is good-humored off it — isn’t overly burdened by the so-called bad luck that’s followed this team like a scorned lover. It’s a result of his mix of youth and maturity — young enough to have a short memory, with enough of a track record to understand that past success is repeatable.
To wit: Scott settled down nicely after that first inning, not allowing a single hit and retiring 13 of his last 14 batters. He walked none and struck out eight.
“I’m just really confident in myself and my stuff,” he said. “I know that I belong here and my stuff plays at a high level when it’s in the strike zone and so I just [have to do it] on a consistent basis.”
That’s not to say that one good outing can save this season — far from it. But the mindset is a start.
“He kind of set the tone,” Mendoza said. “That’s what makes him [good]. It’s not only because of his stuff. He’s just got a good [temperament]. He doesn’t get too high. He doesn’t get too low. It could have been easy for him to put his head down after the last outing and he goes, here we go again. He didn’t show any signs.”
If the Mets really are going to climb out of this thing, they need more of that, and it’s something they can mine from their younger players.
There’s no doubt that this $365 million team is pressing. It’s not just about having the second-highest payroll in baseball, it’s about the high expectations placed on this franchise the moment they signed one of the greatest baseball talents of this generation in Juan Soto. Missing the playoffs last year was nothing short of an embarrassment, and when president of baseball operations David Stearns gutted the coaching staff and the core, it was with the implicit promise that they were going to go for broke.
Instead, they entered Saturday with the worst record in baseball — days removed from Luke Weaver’s very frank (and very accurate) assessment of how a team with this much talent can get so low.
“I sit there and feel the weight of the world, like I let the team down,” he said Thursday after allowing two back-breaking runs to the Nationals.
A guy like Scott historically has been able to flush that type of albatross. Maybe an even better example is Nolan McLean, who took the mound Saturday night against the Angels. The righthander, called up last season and essentially tasked with saving this team from its own mounting foibles, did everything in his power to propel the Mets into the playoffs, massive pressure notwithstanding.
Through no fault of his own, the Mets fell short, but that doesn’t mean the chatter around McLean diminished. He came into this year with a spot in the rotation, and murmurings of potentially being named Rookie of the Year, and going into Saturday, he somehow began the season exceeding expectations.
According to FanGraphs, McLean’s 1.3 WAR led all National League pitchers; he had a 2.55 ERA and a 2.26 FIP, which is considered a better metric of a pitcher’s actual output. He also appears to be an inductee into the Jacob deGrom School of Zero Run Support.
Heading into Saturday, McLean had allowed only 10 earned runs this season. In those five starts, he’d left the mound with a lead in only one. Pitching without a cushion is far from easy, and capably doing so with so little major-league experience amps up the difficulty level. Still, McLean ambles on, even after tough starts.
He gives you “a lot of confidence,” Mendoza said before Saturday’s game. “You always feel good about your chances, just the way he competes. He’s next-level all the time [because of] his ability to make adjustments, his ability to recognize what other teams are doing, not only the first time but the second time, the third time.”
It’s also because of his ability to navigate the good as well as the bad. It’s not a cure-all, and it’s certainly not foolproof, but it’s a start, and right now, it’s exactly what the Mets need.
Notes & quotes: Catcher Luis Torrens has signed a two-year contract extension that will take him through the 2028 season, the team announced Saturday; it was also his 30th birthday. “He’s been a great citizen, a great player, one of the best, if not the best backup catcher in the league,” Mendoza said. “I’m just proud of him.”
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.
