Mets' Matt Allan, forgotten pitching prospect, finally healthy and returning to games
Mets minor league pitcher Matt Allan during a spring training workout in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Wednesday Feb. 19, 2025. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Matt Allan’s scars tell his story.
His right forearm bears three, each horizontal line about an inch long, spaced out below his wrist, faded by time and sunshine. Those openings were how Dr. Neal ElAttrache, a world-class orthopedic surgeon, accessed the tendon that became Allan’s first new ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. That was May 2021, when he was the Mets’ top pitching prospect.
His left knee has another, a wound that in some ways cut so much deeper. When Allan still was in elbow-related agony at a time when he should have been healed, he and the Mets determined they needed to try again. Dr. Keith Meister, another world-class orthopedic surgeon, pulled a tendon from Allan’s hamstring and put it in his elbow. That was January 2023, by which point Allan’s baseball future was in doubt.
His right elbow displays the largest, the gnarliest, the dark mark of Tommy John surgery — surgeries, in this case. One scar, one spot, twice cut open. In a perverse way, it sort of looks like a smile.
“It’s long,” Allan said, “but she’s pretty.”
Allan, 23 years old and more than five years removed from when he last pitched in a real game, is healthy now. He is in minor-league spring training as a normal and non-rehabbing player, throwing — and throwing hard — alongside fellow pitchers, on the brink of returning to game action with a Mets affiliate come April.
And he doesn’t really stop and stare at these bodily reminders.
“I don’t think about it as much anymore,” he said. “It’s kind of just there.”
Matt Allan the patient
When the Mets selected Allan in the third round of the draft in 2019, they knew he had a bad elbow. It was part of the deal, a “ticking time bomb,” as he described it, that would need to be repaired eventually. Still, they thought so much of his talent that they gave him a first-round-sized signing bonus — $2.5 million — to lure him away from his University of Florida commitment.
Late that summer, he pitched in a half-dozen games, including a cameo with the Brooklyn Cyclones, back then the short-season A club. That level of the minors doesn’t even exist anymore.
“I was a lot more of a know-it-all or a ‘I can go through this myself, I can do this myself, I can bear this burden myself,’” Allan told a small group of reporters Wednesday, his first interview in three years. “Eighteen-year-old Matt is not so bad, but definitely just not as resilient.”
The pandemic caused the cancellation of the 2020 season, and by spring training 2021, the Mets invited him to major-league camp with an assignment: shadow Jacob deGrom. Allan was supposed to be the next ace.
At the end of camp, though, his elbow bothered him again. It was time.
“When it did happen, I just remember at least at first, talking to my family about it, I had a lot of peace with it,” he said. “It’s happened. The news is here. Let’s attack this rehab.”
He did, but it went poorly. He had a follow-up operation — ulnar nerve transposition, common for Tommy John patients — within a year, but it didn’t help. He kept pitching, but the elbow on which the Mets had dreamed “was not feeling good at all,” he said.
When the Mets decided another Tommy John surgery was the only option, it meant Allan would miss another year-plus. It wound up being two. He didn’t know if he would make it back to baseball — or if his body would even let him try.
“A knife to the gut, knife to the heart,” he said. “I would be throwing bullpens and I was still doing all that stuff, but my elbow was killing me. As hard as it was to hear, it was also a relief to know, hey, you don’t have to go through that anymore. What’s ahead of you is not what you’ve been going through.”
Matt Allan the person
Out of the public eye for so long, Allan is sort of the Mets farm system’s forgotten arm. Within the organization, though, he has opened eyes with his fortitude and demeanor. He adjusted his work ethic from working a lot — his natural disposition — to working smart, trusting the system and learning he doesn’t need to do more to feel better.
Along the way, Allan leaned on his faith and family to figure it out, he said.
“Patience was the hardest part,” Allan said. “That realization of baseball is what I do, it’s not who I am — that was a really, really tough pill to swallow. And understanding that the game might not be in the cards, but show up every day as if it is.
“I really believe that God knew I needed that time, even though it was a lot of time. I do believe that there’s a greater plan in place. I needed to go through that. I needed my character to be sculpted into the guy I am now, and that’s an ongoing process, that character development.”
Allan reunited last summer with Brett Baty, the first-rounder in 2019 and a teammate in their first taste of pro ball (and a roommate periodically since). All while Allan has been sidelined, Baty climbed the minor-league ladder, had multiple stints as the Mets’ starting third baseman and returned to the minors. When he was stuck in Port St. Lucie rehabbing an injury last year, there Allan was, still trying to get back.
“I’m super pumped for him, especially to see how this year goes,” Baty said. “And I think everybody in here, once they know what kind of guy he is, everybody will root for him. Because he’s a phenomenal guy.”
Matt Allan the pitcher
For Allan, the dream never died. He has wanted to reach the majors since he was a kid, and that remains the goal. The Mets, near the beginning of the process of finding out what kind of caliber of pitcher he still is, like what they see.
“I feel honestly like I’m the best version of myself that I’ve ever been,” Allan said. “My stuff is better than it’s ever been. My velo is better than it’s been to this point. My curveball, cutter, everything, changeup is much better than it’s ever been. It’s a little bit of that silent work that you don’t really see when you’re in rehab.”
Andrew Christie, director of player development, said: “He’s so highly attuned to what makes good pitching now . . . The changeup is better, the curveball is harder and the cutter didn’t exist. All those things are huge.”
In his recent sessions against batters - other Mets minor-leaguers - Allan’s fastball has been up to 97 mph. His command is spotty — normal for Tommy John guys in their first year back, never mind for a two-timer — and the Mets realize each new step is going to be a process.
“If you get into a game, your first spring training game, and you’re supposed to go three [innings] and it gets [cut short because of pitch count] in two of the three innings, you walk three guys and strike out one, it’s OK,” Christie said. “We’re bracing for that to happen. But it is a very brief learning curve for him, because he’s very dialed in.”
The looming fascinating decision: For which minor-league team does Allan pitch? Real games are imminent.
“I say this now, sitting with you on this bench, that to me it doesn’t get me feeling one way or another. It’s kind of part of the process,” Allan said of the prospect of actually pitching again. “Last year I would’ve been like, oh gosh, I don’t know about that. But I’ve seen such crazy progress with myself and I’m so confident in where I’m at that I’m just grateful. The setting doesn’t really matter to me. Whether it’s a bullpen, whether it’s facing hitters, whether it’s facing Juan Soto, it’s like, man, I’m just so happy to be back out there.”
Allan is due to be a minor-league free agent after this season, but the Mets can keep him by adding him to the 40-man roster. So the coming months are critical.
Maybe the Mets take it easy and send him to Low-A St. Lucie. Maybe it’ll be High-A Brooklyn, with a quick promotion to Double-A Binghamton if merited.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
“I don’t care where I start,” Allan said. “It’s not going to be where I finish.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
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