Mets' pitching future looks bright with the way Brandon Sproat and Blade Tidwell are throwing the ball

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla.

Blade Tidwell probably is months away from a spot in the Mets’ rotation, but he joined a more exclusive club Saturday afternoon by throwing an “immaculate inning” against the Rays.

Nine pitches, nine strikes, three strikeouts. It’s been done only 117 times in major-league history, which makes the feat considerably rarer than a no-hitter (326) or hitting for the cycle (348). Only David Cone (1991) and Nolan Ryan (1968) have pulled it off for the Mets.

This being the Grapefruit League, on March 1, Tidwell gets an asterisk, however. After all, we’re talking practice.

But watching the highly touted Mets prospect chop up a legit Rays lineup at Charlotte Sports Park felt very real in every other aspect outside the official regular-season record book. Firing a fastball that touched 99 mph a few times and mostly sat around 97, Tidwell mixed in a brisk sweeper and what he termed a “gyro-slider” to buzz through the second inning.

He got Josh Lowe to whiff on that bullet-spin slider, an 88.3-mph pitch that dives straight down. He rifled his top fastball (99.1 mph) past a swinging Eloy Jimenez before using an 87.1-mph sweeper — an elite velocity for that particular pitch — to strike out Jose Caballero.

The inning was over so quickly, and in such dominating fashion, that Tidwell didn’t even realize what he had done.

So who told him?

“I think Twitter,” Tidwell said.

The Mets figured he already knew as he came off the mound. But Tidwell was just so tunnel-focused on the task at hand, he apparently was too busy dispatching the Rays to think bigger picture. And from a development perspective, for a rising star the Mets envision in their rotation at some point this season, Saturday’s mindset was the ideal head space for him.

“That’s a very good thing,” pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said. “We’ll keep him right there.”

Along those same lines, the Mets had Tidwell cut back his arsenal from nine pitches to a tighter five heading into spring training, trimming him down to a pair of fastballs (two- and four-seam grips), the sweeper, the gyro-slider and the changeup. Better to concentrate on sharpening a handful of pitches than making his life too complicated on the mound, and Tidwell clearly has blow-away ability with the stuff that he featured Saturday afternoon. Dicing up the Rays was Exhibit A.

“I wanted to see how I stacked up against a big-league squad,” Tidwell said. “I thought it was going to be fun and going to be a challenge, and it ended up being both.”

Tidwell recalled throwing an immaculate inning in high school, but that was the last time. And what he did to the Rays deserves some kind of new terminology because this wasn’t just one inning.

Tidwell had whiffed Christopher Morel on three pitches to end the first, freezing him with a 96.4-mph fastball, and his work in the second inning gave him four Ks on 12 consecutive strikes. Overall, he struck out five straight in two innings, with Yandy Diaz the only Rays hitter to put the ball in play (a sinking lineout to center).

“That goes to show you when you’re on the attack, throwing strikes and getting ahead, your stuff is going to play,” manager Carlos Mendoza said.

Of Tidwell’s 19 pitches, 18 were strikes. That’s a great sign for a team that struggled with spiking walk totals last season. The Mets allowed 586 free passes in 2024, the most in the National League and third-most in the majors behind the White Sox and Angels.

“I think what we’re challenging a lot of our guys that are coming up on — and guys currently on the roster — is having a real clear plan of what they want to do on that day,” Hefner said. “We need to have a clear direction on what they’re trying to do.”

The Mets have to be thrilled about what lies ahead for their rotation — a drastic reversal from the late-February dread of losing two starters in the span of two weeks. President of baseball operations David Stearns again went the depth and flexibility route in piecing together this year’s rotation, forgoing the most expensive free-agent arms. That strategy took an early hit when Frankie Montas (lat-muscle strain) and Sean Manaea (oblique) went down with injuries that will put them on the injured list come Opening Day.

For the immediate future, the Mets believe they’re OK as long as Kodai Senga stays on track and Clay Holmes reacts well to his conversion from closer to starter. But if those “ifs” get too iffy a few months into the season, high-octane help should be right around the corner, or least upstate, where Tidwell and Brandon Sproat will be headlining the Triple-A Syracuse rotation.

On Friday, it was Sproat’s turn to shine. He pitched two perfect innings against the Nationals and showed off an electric fastball that repeatedly hit 99 mph. Next was Tidwell, who took the two-hour bus trip to Port Charlotte and heated up fast against the Rays. Seeing those two go back-to-back like that can’t help but conjure memories of the Harvey-deGrom-Syndergaard days, when the Mets figured to have a stable of Cy Young Award candidates for the next decade or more.

That’s a dangerous comp, of course, but it’s also the last time we can remember the Mets having 20-something flamethrowers lighting up the radar gun in the Grapefruit League.

It’s an exciting time for the franchise, but given that history, also a time to proceed with caution. In Tidwell, 23, and Sproat, 24, the Mets are developing the next round of future stars. Just don’t call them Generation K.

“As an organization, that’s a good feeling when you got two guys like that at the Triple-A level knocking on the door like that,” Mendoza said.

Bulldozing through it might be a more accurate description after the early reviews of Tidwell and Sproat. You can’t be any better than immaculate, right?

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.