Mets' Christian Scott cool, calm and collected during his Citi Field debut
Mets starting pitcher Christian Scott delivers against Atlanta during the first inning of an MLB baseball game at Citi Field on Saturday, May 11, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Few people get to experience putting on a uniform and stepping out onto a major-league baseball field in New York. Fewer get to do that as the day’s starting pitcher, the first and best defense against the team in the opposing dugout.
And then there’s the rarefied class: The young phenoms who shoulder the massive expectations of a fan base looking for its next savior. The Mets have had their share — Doc Gooden and Generation K (Jason Isringhausen, Paul Wilson, Bill Pulsipher) and Matt Harvey — and on Saturday, they introduced the newest iteration to the Flushing Faithful: Here’s Christian Scott, and we sure do hope he’s as good as everyone thinks he might be.
No pressure, right?
Actually, “it was a little bit scary,” Luis Severino said, recalling his Yankee Stadium debut in 2015. “I went to Manhattan and I went to eat with my family and on the TVs, you’d see ‘Severino was pitching the next day.’ For me, it was blocking everything outside of baseball. After I threw my first pitch on the mound, everything came back. It was the same baseball I’d been playing my whole life.”
Scott already had made his major-league debut — a scintillating performance against Tampa Bay last week — but there was no doubt that pitching at Citi Field for the first time was its own pivotal milestone. With Atlanta in town and the Mets attempting to claw their way toward relevance, Scott represents a vision for the future, and perhaps a stabilizing presence in a rotation that’s been in flux since Kodai Senga went down with his shoulder injury.
In every way, Scott lived up to the challenge.
Sure, he wasn’t as untouchable as he was against the Rays: He struck out eight in six innings-plus and allowed three earned runs, six hits and two walks in the Mets’ 4-1 loss to Atlanta. But he also undoubtedly was steady and undoubtedly was good, mixing in his fastball, slider and sweeper to good effect.
The thing is, though, no one really came into Saturday doubting Scott’s stuff. His reputation has long preceded him, and everyone from manager Carlos Mendoza to Severino to Sean Manaea opined this past week that the kid has what it takes to be special.
What was more encouraging, however, was his demeanor.
Before the game, Scott calmly listened to music on his headphones. He spent the week talking to Severino about the highs and lows of pitching in New York and went to Manaea to learn more about how he uses video to parse his starts. When Atlanta strung together a few hits in the third and fourth innings, he was able to limit the damage. After the game, he said he wasn’t really ever nervous.
When I asked if he’s always been this steely, he was frank: “Honestly, not really,” he said.
“I’ve got to give a lot of credit to the Mets’ development staff giving me a couple of pitches to rely on,” he added. “In previous outings, like when I was in college and whatnot, I knew that if I didn’t have my slider, that would be a long day for me; I was a two-pitch guy. So I think them really giving me a lot of weapons to be able to work with has really helped that situation, for sure.”
It’s a logical, downright Vulcan approach to what could be a highly emotional moment in a pitcher’s career: I know I can do this, so I’m going to do it.
It sounds like common sense, but it’s far easier said than done in baseball, in which nothing is guaranteed no matter how much you prepare. We saw how Generation K failed to meet expectations, and we were all witnesses to Harvey’s downfall. Careers aren’t built on hype, but they sure can be undermined by it.
Realistically, no one knows how this is going to pan out, but the early returns at least indicate that Scott’s mental toughness is as much of an asset as the nasty movement on his fastball.
“He’s a pretty confident kid,” Mendoza said. “His poise, his body language, his demeanor on the mound. I don’t think the situation is too big for him. He knows he’s good. He knows his stuff plays here and he was facing a pretty good lineup and he wasn’t intimidated at all.
“He was going after people there, especially with his fastball, and getting swings and misses. That’s really good to see, especially for a young pitcher that’s just getting his feet wet at this level.”
That’s probably why, at times, Saturday felt like another day at the office, even despite the pomp. Whenever Scott got a strikeout, the giant scoreboard played a “Great Scott!” sound bite, accompanied with a flaming “Back to the Future”- style graphic (for what it’s worth, Scott was 14 years away from being born when that movie came out in 1985). He worked quickly, rarely showed emotion and walked off resolutely as a crowd of 38,919 got to its feet and gave him a standing ovation in the seventh.
“I just felt locked in, felt ready to compete,” he said. “I absolutely love getting the ball in these situations. Any time you can get the ball in a situation like that against these guys, I’m going to take it every chance I can get.”
It’s a rare quality, confidence and concentration, coupled with a yeoman’s approach to preparation and hard work. But then again, it’s looking as if there’s a whole lot about Christian Scott that could be pretty rare. And that’s a very, very good thing.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.