Nolan McLean was already considered a long shot for 2026 Rookie of the Year honors, and he didn’t exactly help his chances on Friday.
McLean allowed a career-high 10 hits in the Mets’ 6-4 loss to the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. McLean struck out five and walked only one, but he left with five earned runs on his ledger after taking 101 pitches to get through five innings. He allowed two home runs.
The three-run shot he allowed to Cody Bellinger in the second inning was the first homer McLean had ever surrendered on his curveball.
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“I was happy where I put that pitch,” McLean told reporters after the game. “I didn’t want to leave the zone too much and not get the swing and put him on base. He was able to dig it out … and put it in the seats.”
Often when McLean struggles, it’s more so due to control. He’s displayed some of the nastiest movement on his pitches in the majors. But that wasn’t the issue on Friday; he was simply more hittable than usual. The Yankees tagged virtually his entire arsenal, including three hits off his curveball.
A double play limited the damage in the first inning, and McLean settled in for a scoreless third and fourth.
But Ben Rice‘s solo shot in the fifth put a final damper on McLean’s evening.
McLean’s ERA rose to 3.24. If he had turned in a better outing on Friday, he could have gotten his ERA below 3.00. Combined with his 184 strikeouts in 166 2/3 innings, he might have been a quietly attractive option for Rookie of the Year in that case. He owns the 13th-most strikeouts in MLB, one spot behind a righty you might have heard of named Jacob deGrom.
McLean’s rough May sort of faded him from the conversation. But May has turned out, for the most part, to be an outlier in McLean’s otherwise very strong first full season in the majors. From May 31 through July 30, McLean allowed more than two earned runs in a start only once.
Even with Friday’s ugly 10-hit performance, McLean is still tied for ninth in the majors among qualified starters in opponent batting average, at .214.
But hitters have dominated the Rookie of the Year conversations. JJ Wetherholt was considered the frontrunner by many for a while, but he’s been on the injured list since Aug. 30, and his bat’s been fading anyway. Sal Stewart is likely considered the favorite now with an .816 OPS along with eye-popping traditional counting stats: 31 home runs and 107 RBIs. Carson Benge has put his name on the radar, too, but similar to McLean, he’s more of an underdog in the fight. It seems it’s Stewart’s to lose at this point — though for what it’s worth, Benge has a higher fWAR (3.1) than Stewart (2.6).
It’s hard to perfectly quantify hitters against pitchers. If McLean were to finish with a sub-3.00 ERA and 200-plus strikeouts, that body of work is hard to ignore. Friday’s outing hurt those chances, but he’s still in line to finish with a very solid rookie season that, if nothing else, will garner some down-ballot votes on the Rookie of the Year card.
