Mets' Brandon Sproat on the major-league radar for early 2025
Mets prospect Brandon Sproat attends a game against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citi Field on Friday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
At the end of his charmed first season of professional baseball, Brandon Sproat is tired.
That is normal at the end of any year, even more so after one as busy as his. The Mets righthander tossed 116 1⁄3 innings as he rose from High-A Brooklyn to Triple-A Syracuse — the brink of the majors — shooting up prospect rankings about as fast as he did the minor leagues.
The Mets’ rotation depth chart is such that entering the offseason (during which plenty can and will change), Sproat probably is sixth on the list for 2025.
He entered the season as a super-interesting draft pick, mostly a hypothetical. He finished as a top-100 prospect in all of baseball.
“When it’s my time, it’s my time,” Sproat said. “I’m fully confident in myself that I can come up here and make an impact on this team.”
Sproat spoke Friday afternoon at Citi Field, where he and several others were honored as Mets minor-league award winners; he was the pitcher of the year.
Outfielder Nick Morabito was the player of the year after stealing 59 bases with solid hitting numbers (.312/.403/.398) across two Single-A levels. President of baseball operations David Stearns called him “one of the most dynamic athletes in all of minor-league baseball.”
“Adding the skills to go along with that incredible athleticism puts together a really exciting package for us to think about,” Stearns said.
Sproat was the fastest riser in a developing pitching pipeline that the Mets feel has talent at every level of the farm system. He began in Brooklyn, where he posted a 1.07 ERA in a half-dozen outings.
Because he clearly was too good for the level, the Mets bumped him up to Double-A Binghamton after a month. There it was more of the same: 2.45 ERA and well over a strikeout per inning (and much improved control/fewer walks).
In early August, Sproat’s season became a different kind of interesting. They promoted him again, to Syracuse, and he struggled.
Mets prospect Nick Morabito attends a game against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citi Field on Friday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
“The bigger jump is from Double-A to Triple-A,” Sproat said. “The older guys put it best: In Double-A, you gotta worry about two, maybe three different approaches. In Triple-A, you got nine different approaches that you gotta not worry about but mix and match and put a puzzle together. And you’re facing veterans who have been in The Show. It’s fun to pitch against them.
“But yeah, I’m very pleased with how this year went and very pleased with being able to get a taste of what Triple-A was like. I want to go into the offseason and build on it.”
Sproat had a 7.53 ERA and much less than a strikeout per inning in that final month-plus of the season. He held the opposing team scoreless in one out of seven outings. He maxed out at six strikeouts in a game.
“The value is moving past the struggles, right?” Stearns said. “The value is seeing that adversity and then fighting through that adversity and understanding that that is part of this game, that failure is a part of this game and we have to move past it.”
That phase hardly diminishes the Mets’ overall belief in Sproat. A repertoire featuring a fastball that reaches triple-digits — plus a changeup, slider, sweeper and curveball — is more important than the surface-level numbers at Triple-A. All involved consider this season wildly successful.
“It’s been a ton of fun. It’s been a roller coaster,” Sproat said. “This year’s been a great year for me. I couldn’t have been more pleased with myself.”
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.
