The New York Mets finally pulled the trigger and decided to call up one of their premier young arms in Nolan McLean to make a debut. McLean, who dominated in Triple-A, responded in a big way, giving the Mets 5 1/3 terrific innings and notching his first career big-league win. It was a magical Saturday afternoon debut at Citi Field for the 24-year-old former two-way player.

McLean only allowed two hits in his first major league outing. He held the Seattle Mariners scoreless over those 5 1/3 innings of work, striking out eight. The former Oklahoma State Cowboy was removed from the game at 91 pitches (55 strikes), and left-handed Gregory Soto worked around McLean’s inning-opening walk, to ensure a scoreless outing for the young right-handed prospect.

The only bugaboo for McLean was his inability to throw strikes at points. He walked four batters, a trend that followed him throughout his minor league stops, and specifically, this season, where he walked 50 across 113 2/3 total minor league innings. However, outside that, he was magnificent on Saturday.

McLean picked up right where he left off in the minor leagues. The metric, “Stuff+,” measures a pitch’s physical characteristics, such as velocity, movement, and spin. A 100 rating is average, while anything above qualifies as a “filthier” pitch while anything below 100 demonstrates a physically subpar pitch. McLean’s 126 “Stuff+” rating leads all Triple-A pitchers this season according to Eno Sarris of Fangraphs. This translated to the big leagues right away, as he posted a 106 “Stuff+” on Saturday. Specifically, his sweeper owned a “Stuff+” of 111 according to Thomas Nestico on X.

Mandatory Credit: John Jones-Imagn Images

Analyzing more into McLean’s arsenal on Saturday; he threw his sweeper 36% of the time, sinker 26% of the time, curveball 21% of the time, fastball 10% of the time, and mixed in a cutter and changeup a combined 6% of the time. With this pitch mix, he was able to generate 11 whiffs on 38 swings, good for a 29% whiff rate. Fox context, the average in the big leagues this season is around 23%.

McLean was also able to get hitters the chase, specifically, his curveball induced a 46.2% chase rate. For context, the average induced chase rate by pitchers in the big leagues is 29-to-30%. Further, to show how lethal that curveball was on Saturday, the pitch averaged 3,279 RPM of spin. Entering Saturday, the pitcher who led the major leagues in curveball spin was veteran Charlie Morton. His average sits at 3,168 RPM.

To top off the sensational debut outing, the former two-way player also flashed the glove on numerous occasions. The most notable was a double play he turned in the third inning with his back up against the wall. McLean found himself in a bases loaded, one-out situation thanks to two walks to lead-off the inning and a single by current American League MVP favorite, Cal Raleigh. McLean got Julio Rodríguez to hit a ground ball right back up the middle. The former third-round pick made a nifty behind-the-back snag and tossed the ball to second base starting the 1-4-3 inning-ending double play.

In his first big-league start, McLean was as promised. He turned in a sparkling outing while flashing the stuff that had the young pitcher ranked by several as a top-100 prospect in all of baseball. He was so good, he made Mets history, of sorts, as he became the second Mets pitcher to win their big league debut, allow zero runs, and have eight or more strikeouts, as pointed out by MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo. Hopefully, this is just the beginning in McLean’s journey to be a stalwart in the Mets’ rotation for years to come.