The New York Mets are calling up pitching prospect Nolan McLean to start on Saturday vs the Mariners at Citi Field. The 24-year-old will be making his major league debut a little over two years after being drafted in the third round by the Mets.
McLean has a 2.78 ERA, 1.10 WHIP and 97 strikeouts over 87 1/3 innings with the Triple-A Syracuse Mets this season. Before his promotion to Triple-A, the former two-way player had a 1.37 ERA in five starts for Double-A Binghamton. Important to note that McLean is already at a career-high 113 2/3 innings after pitching 109 2/3 innings last season. McLean is holding opponents to a .184 average this season, the best among International League pitchers with at least 80 innings.
Nolan McLean. Photo by Wyatt Lucovsky/Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp
Since deciding to give up hitting in June of 2024, McLean has a 2.86 ERA over 173 innings between Double-A and Triple-A. Prior to that, he had a 3.86 ERA between Low-A St. Lucie, High-A Brooklyn and Double-A Binghamton.
McLean’s sweeper is the pitch that gets the notoriety as one of the best in the minors, but he comes to the majors with a full repertoire. He uses a four-seamer in the mid-90s and hit 97 mph in his last start, a sinker that gets up to 19 inches of vertical break and a cutter he uses about 16% of the time. McLean also has a high-spin, big breaking curveball that routinely hits over 3,200 rpms. Lastly, McLean is still fine-tuning a split-change that he used more (eight times) in his most recent outing to help get lefties out.
The sweeper has held hitters to a .187/.253/.330 line with a 30% whiff rate. However, it’s his sinker that has held opponents to a .152/.239/.203 slash and has helped him to a 53.5% groundball rate. McLean has thrown his sinker 313 times this year, with only two of them being hit for extra bases. A home run by Dominic Fletcher in his most recent start and a double by Kristian Campbell, both players with major league time.
Even so, the best pitch for McLean this season in terms of effectiveness has been the curve. He’s thrown it only 8.7% of the time, yet hitters can’t touch it with a .121/.194/.212 with a whopping 48.4% whiff rate.
While the success of McLean’s sweeper and curve (righties don’t have a hit against it this season) has made him extremely tough on righties (.454 OPS), the left-handed hitters have fared much better (.704 OPS) against him overall. McLean has been much better vs. the lefties over the last four games: 4-for-51 with 12 strikeouts. He has basically flipped his fastball usage vs lefties. Dropping his 4-seamer from 30% to 17% and increasing his sinker from 10% to 24% during that period.
Outside of the previous issues with lefties, one notable thing to watch is the walks. McLean has issued at least three walks in five of his last six starts. Struggling with a tighter zone in Triple-A isn’t uncommon, given the strict strike zone pitchers are faced with because of the ABS challenge system.
McLean, a top 50 MLB prospect in Baseball Prospectus (34), MLB Pipeline (37), and Baseball America (40), could give a much-needed boost to a struggling Mets rotation if he’s able to cut down on the walks and continue to limit the damage from lefty hitters.
