Mets Make Big Prospect Moves | Straight Outta Flushing

What's up everybody, welcome back to another edition of Straight Outta Flushing. Dexter Henry with my guide Tyler Ward. Wardy is here fresh off of being at the stadium for the Subway Series. First of all, how are you doing? How's your weekend? Oh, I'm great, Dex. You good? Weekend has been fantastic. Other than the Mets dropping two out of three, you know, pretty good. You know, my football team won this weekend, this Sunday as well. I can't complain about that. I'm not even a Jets fan, but I know J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets. They had a big win against the Titans, you know. Giants tonight, we'll see what happens. So all in all, it's been a fun weekend and I'm excited to chop it up on the Subway Series. I'm glad you had a good weekend despite the Mets losing two out of three. My weekend was pretty good too. Football team won as well, so I can't complain about that. Well, we were for the same team. That's right. Is that the reason for the fit today? It might be. That might be. I love that. For those that don't know, Dex is rocking some gorgeous, you know, black and yellow Nikes right now too. So he's absolutely set to the mines right now. Yeah, I try. I try people. But the Mets, they lose two out of three to the Yankees this weekend. You were there for the finale. What were the major takeaways for you in this series? Because it was an interesting series considering how it went with the Mets winning the middle of these three games here. But what was your major takeaway from the series? Our biggest takeaway from the series is that, you know, contrary to heading into the series where I said I was fairly confident I thought the Mets would win two out of three, and it wasn't because of bias. It was just, you know, the simple reality that this felt like a Mets team that's kind of had the upper hand on the Yankees not only this season but in years past. You know, these matchups, regardless if the Mets have, you know, been great on paper or terrible on paper, they've still had that result that has found themselves more in the winning column. So this series kind of proved that the Yankees in the heart of their playoff run right now with the Red Sox right next to them, with the Rays right above them, and they have a big matchup coming up. They had to put pedal metal, and they did that, and they pounced on Nolan McClain, which was not ideal. Not happy to see that. We'll talk more on that in a second. But Nolan had his essentially worst start of his career to kick start the series on the 9-11 ceremony game, and then game two was a lot better than game three and game one, obviously. Zach Thornton, the big takeaway there is Andy Green, something that we've talked about a lot, Zach's letting his young kids actually have some runway, right? He goes to the mound, and he says, you know what, kid, we'll keep you in the game. And Zach, you know, is emphatic, you know, yelling F-bombs with authority after he's gained those big outs against the Yankees, and you have to feel great about that for Thornton who went seven strong, and that's hold it to victory. Also, another takeaway I would have on the pos men is A.J. Ewing finding his swing again. Yes. You know, I understand that he didn't hit much in game three, but no one hit against Cam Schlittler who mowed everyone down, dotting 99 until literally essentially his final out of the game. So, A.J. looked great, Carson Bench looked awesome, and I think a lot about the quote that Juan Soto made regarding Carson over the past day, which is that, you know, this isn't a surprise anymore. You know, he's a superstar. Like, he's doing things that superstars do, and to hear that from the $765 million man as a rookie, I can only imagine how Bench feels. I think that's pretty cool. So, these are just some of my big takeaways from the series. How about you? You know how Bench feels? He's like, I want to get paid like you. I want to get paid like a superstar. He's on rookie minimum right now. He's like, yeah, just loan me a bone, brother. So, one of my big takeaways, too, and I think coming into the series, I was like, okay, how is the pitching going to look? You talked about that the other day. How's the young starting pitcher going to look? So, you can look at McLean's start and say, ah, that wasn't ideal, but he's been a dog all season. We've seen him look really, really good. Fans know that. They've seen this guy look really, really good. Am I going to be disappointed about how he started against the Yankees? Because we talked about how this is an opportunity for these guys and for the big crowds. Right. No, it's not a playoff game, but it's a chance for them to show some things here. That didn't happen. I liked how the Mets bounced back on Saturday. I absolutely liked that. I liked how the offense bounced back, but one of my major takeaways might come from the third game, which the Mets lose 2-0 in the finale. And what would that be, Dex? Christian Scott. I liked how he pitched battling with Kemp. Like, made a couple of bad pitches, right? Didn't go well for him, but you liked the fact he had seven strikeouts, pitched well through the six innings. He battled. He didn't let the game get out of hand. He gave the Mets a chance to stay in this game. So, for me, I don't know. I've been really impressed with this kid's makeup throughout the season, and you're hoping that that can be a foundational piece for the Mets going forward, because we've talked about so many other names. We'll talk about McLean. We even talked about Tong a couple of weeks ago, right? Christian Scott's kind of become a forgotten guy that is now resurging. He's had himself a solid year, and so to go up against one of the best pitchers in the game, best young pitchers in the game in Kemp Schlittler, and battle with him throughout, I was really impressed with that from him. Now, look, you could look at some other players here and say the Mets' offense outside of Saturday was not amazing, right? Kind of weird series for Juan Soto going back to the Bronx. Didn't do a lot at the plate. He shut him up once. Yeah, shut him up once. We'll take that. We'll take that, right? And that's good enough. And Mets fans were good enough. And listen, you heard the boos. You know, we heard the boos there, Yankees. Oh, I promise I heard the boos. We heard the boos, and I wasn't even there. We heard the boos. Dex heard the boos all the way here in Manhattan. I heard the boos all the way here. But listen, you know, you could say it's kind of a quiet series. Maybe you want that loud series from him against the Yankees. I think this is fine for the Mets. They play competitive baseball for the most part. I don't think he'd be mad as soon as the Mets win. No, I don't think he'd be mad. When it comes to, you know, what the expectation was heading into the series, it's not like the Mets have the daunting pressure of, oh, we're pushing for playoffs right now. It was just about having a valiant effort of a series. And while obviously they didn't win more than one, going back to what you said about Christian Scott, I think is a very important point, right? Scott, this season, is pitching right around a three and a half or just over a three and a half year array. And outside of those two pitches where the first pitch that he threw to Ben Rice was just a bad placement, splitter, almost middle, middle. I mean, you're a guy like Rice who has north of 40 home runs, he's going to make you pay. Austin Wells stunned just because he's like, he's batting a buck 80 and he took a first pitch fastball. Never feel good about giving up a bomb to Austin Wells. Even Yanks fans are probably as much disbelief. I will say this, while at the game, there was a kiddo behind me and I was sitting mainly a Yankee section. And right before the pitch was thrown, he's like, Homer, right away, he called it so good. So good. And the worst part is that was the only pitch that he called the entire game, Homer, ahead of time. So it wasn't like he was just saying it on and on and on again. I don't know. I don't know if he has this type of connection that we're unaware of with Austin. All I know is that it didn't make me happy in the moment. I would have turned around and glared at that kid. I did. I gave him fist bump like with a smirk. I was like, that was a good call. I was like, I have to deal with that. But Christian Scott, though, who I spoke to briefly on the field after the game, said he had a great start. I mean, he appreciated that. And to your point, he looked good. You know, after he gave up those home runs, he settled down. It's funny. After one of his big strikeouts, I'm judged to kind of get him looking. You could see the reaction on Scott's face. He was like, you could tell he like side and really the relief that he had a smirk and then a size like, all right, thank God we got out of that. That was pretty good. But, you know, Christian is someone who when we look at his workload this year, you know, for his first full season back from reconstructive Tommy John surgery, I would say that this is nothing short of a resounding success. I mean, he's going to probably finish the year with north of an 11K per nine. Walk rate is fluctuate as we know. But, you know, for a full for a first full season as he unstarted this rotation, I think he really set himself up well for what can be built upon next year. You know, we think of when Andy Green first became manager of this Mets team. What was one of the first things they highlighted? It was raving about Christian Scott, raving about Carson Bench, raving about the young kids that he's worked one-on-one with that we've seen in player development. And Scott in particular, you know, Andy had his hands all over, you know, from the time of the inception of him becoming, you know, head of player development. And Christian, you know, I reference this to all the time decks when he first got called up by the Mets in 2024. And mind you, he put solid. Yes, he gave up a homerun like every start. He was dealing still with a partially torn UCL for over a year. The Mets pushed over a year coming out of college from Florida even. And on top of it, Christian was putting up minor league numbers and no other starter in the minors was doing at the time. If your name wasn't Paul Skeens, I'd say that's decent category, right? So I think so. Yeah, I think so too, right? So all in all, I'm impressed with Christian and I think the Mets, while I would have loved to see more offense, they gave us some things to be continuing to look forward to as we build upon getting into 2027. And look for me, it wasn't, it's not even just today because if you look at his last three starts, right, 16 in his pits, 16 strikeouts in those three starts. So that's really nice. You love the strikeout rate there from him. A couple extra base hits and all those coming today. Uh, there's seven walks, three, nine, four ERA. Look, he's been solid. He's going to, he only walked one batter today, right? Yeah. He did one batter today. And so I got seven. Yeah. One 43 batting average against nice in terms of, so you like the way he's been pitching in just the last three starts. And you know what? The other thing you'd like is we talking a lot about this as we get to the end of the season, guys like him finishing strong. You want to see them finish the season strong. You want to see this way to finishing the season. That's encouraging for the Mets. So for me, we're two out of three, the nice, absolutely worthy. The Mets didn't get it, but just seeing some of the young pitchers battle pitch well, keep them in games. Some of the young players break out, talk about AJ Ewing. Didn't look good through the month of August, but now he's starting to come out. How he pimped that home run. Dare I say there's some, there's some fans on X that were reacting to this. And I see the parallel a little bit. It's like, you look at AJ Ewing, he's a multi-talented player. He's, you know, a multi-war player in his rookie year. And at the age of 22, that swing somewhat reminiscent of a PCA. I'm going to say, listen, we might have him at home. We might not be too upset after all Mets fans. Give it some time, give it a minute, let it marinate. Let's see how AJ looks over the next two seasons. Next year, as I told you, the big thing for AJ is to not have a massive sophomore slump, right? Can he continue to build upon this and not have, you know, what really weighs heavy on a lot of players' shoulders after having to rather breakout rookie season, especially for AJ, who wasn't necessarily expected to be at the big league level as soon as he was. I had the thought heading into it because he was so dominant last year and great in spring training, but for him to kind of leapfrog the way that he did at time, even guys like Nick Moribito that some people thought was more deserving at the time of the first half this year for him to jump and kind of in a way that Zach Thornton, I think, leapfrogged in a lot of ways how I thought he would not be in front of Jonathan Santucci this year, right? Who we're going to talk more about in a little bit on this one and making this rotation. The same applies with AJ with kind of leapfrogging some other outfielders in the minors, and now the big question is can he continue this pace and is this just the start of AJ Ewing blossoming into, you know, a multi-talented outfielder that's right up there with Carson Benz with guys that we don't want anyone else for the next, hopefully at minimum, half decade. You'll sign for that. Every day of the week. You'll sign for that. Now, speaking of young players who actually are moving on up, which we like to see. I know you're excited to see this. We got to go back. Let's go back to the trade deadline. Oh, please. We were right here. Right here when the Mets acquired Jefferson Rojas from the Cubs. If I remember correctly, you weren't unhappy. You were smiling. You were sitting right here. You were happy about all this acquisition of the Mets getting this guy who immediately jumped to becoming their number one prospect. Now, all that happens and he goes down, he plays a double-A leveling. You've got to be saying to yourself, and fans are saying this too, how's this all going to play out? How's this all going to look? How's this guy going to adjust? Well, he produced. He produced just a little bit, okay? 21-year-old, shortstop, third baseman, wherever you want to put him, he can play in both positions. 29 games with Binghamton. Let me hear it. 280 average, 929 OPS, folks. Hell yeah. Nine home runs, okay? Just amazing. Overall double-A numbers, if you count it from when he still was with the Cubs organization, 272 with an 833 OPS and 24 home runs. That's over 120 games. So, you know what that means, Dex. He got better once he entered the org. Got better when he had a little red-hot Mitch Voigt and Emelian Petrie around him right from the jump, you know? Playing with good players can help that. Absolutely. That was the same Rebel Ponies team that back in, I think, early the summer were north of 30 games below 500. Now they're within like 5 or 10 games right now. It's all because of the success they've had post-trade-in lines, but it's been a lot of fun to watch. It's been a lot of fun. When you look at this with Jefferson Rojas, I think it's exactly what you want to see when a guy comes into the organization. Okay, he's, you know, 21 years old. Still have heard he's got some things to work out defensively, but the bat, which everyone raved about when you talk to them about Jefferson Rojas, the bat's looking good, and now he's getting promoted. Now he's going up to AAA Syracuse, and he'll get to finish out the year there. How excited are you about this opportunity for him with what we've seen him do at the AA level? So, I'm trying to somewhat temper expectations, just because when you get excited about prospects, you get pie in the face fast, you know, especially if they don't pan out the way that you hope. But there's a reason why Jefferson Rojas is deemed as a top 80 prospect in all of MLB pipeline right now, and when you look at his tools, the great thing about him is he has a very compact swing. He doesn't have this long and lengthy swing where I think it's going to have a massive adjustment at the major league level. He's very concise in the way that he approaches the plate, not only when it comes to making hits, but also grinding that at bats for walks, but it's a defense too. I mean, he's another guy that can comfortably handle whether it's short, the hot corner, or what very well could be his future position if it's not, say, Emilian Petrie out the jump, who I've been raving a lot about. That's at second base for the Mets next year. You know, when we think of today, Subway Series, who was at second? It wasn't Marcus Simi. It was a Rep 80. What do those players have in common? Neither should be guaranteed a starting second baseman for the New York Mets next season. Maybe that's a hot take. I don't think it's a hot take, but that's, you know, that's just my stance on it. I think there's a lot of fans that would not like to see either of them on the roster next season. Right, and I'm not saying that they need to go that far when it comes to making their decision at second, but you know, you want to move upward, right? If the Mets are focusing on winning next season, it would make sense to have a blend of their continued youth movement, helping that be a factor. Where would the Mets be? They'd be so much worse without Carson Menge and AJ Ewing this year, for example, right? You know, they would not be nearly the defensive or offensive position that they've had with those great players throughout the year. So I think, you know, for David Stearns, who has been known during his time in Milwaukee to really gain success by building within the farm and trusting player development, that needs to ring true as we get into 2027, when you have the influx of infielders that they have. Marajas at the forefront, then you have Mitch Voigt right behind him. You got Emilian Petrie right in that conversation. They're all three-headed monster. Sammy Stafora, the New York native, is like, I got to get in that conversation soon, too. So absolutely. So yeah, I'm very excited to see what's going to come of Jefferson in the final couple weeks of the year in Syracuse now. Get a little cup of coffee there, and then once we get to next season, whatever that happens post-blockout, the Mets are going to have some really fun decisions on their hands as long as these guys are healthy and ready to go. Good promise to have. I know fans are going to say, listen, another thing is you can't keep everybody. I always will say that, but one of the things I've liked that David Stearns and company have done with the Mets, and you just mentioned it earlier with A.J. Ewing, but you're seeing this here with these young prospects, hey, guys are playing well, let's move them up. Let's see what they can do. Let's give them an opportunity. Let's evaluate them further, and then make decisions on that. And let's put them around other good players. You know why? Because competition is good sometimes. Oh, for sure. You know, that's going to rub off. Especially when it's healthy competition. Yeah, healthy competition. Where it's like buddies, you know, like kind of like, you know, even Beatty and Vientos, they've been close for years. Yes. It's kind of, it's not like, oh, I'm preying on your downfall. It's like, okay, you got a good game. More incentive for me to try to do better. You step up my game. Exactly. Yeah, feed off of each other. Yeah, game's going to recognize game. Iron's going to sharpen, sharpen iron. Even A.J. Minter, I remember earlier this year, he was in the bullpen, was saying how everyone's just feeding off of each other right now. Between myself, Brooks, we're all doing the same thing. That's what you want, and that's what you want as part of your culture. So I think it's great for Jefferson Rojas to just come into the organization. And obviously, he had to produce, right? Producing matters. It's not just, you know, just being there and just saying, hey, because you're a top prospect, you can get up there. He had to produce. He's done that well at the plate. They're now going to try to see, I think, really what's going to come down to AAA level is, okay, we know you can hit. We know the bat's good. What's it going to look like for you defensively? Are we going to then hone in on you having the exact position? And second base, you mentioned that too, there's a possibility for him there. It's a lot of openings for the Mets around second base. Also, I agree with you. Nobody should be penciled in as a starter. Nobody should be penciled in. If Simeon or Beatty's penciled in while those prospects, say, looked good in a small sample size, if there is a spring training or just we know how they looked from last season, I think there's a little bit of a problem. And that might be an understatement because it just feels like the Mets are making the same decisions that they made in years past where they're kind of hanging on to guys a little too long. You know, the Simeon contract, I understand, is difficult because the Mets still have a couple of years of around north of 20 million a year for a guy that is a shell of what he once was. It's not going to be anything better than probably 650 OPS when he's really doing his thing. And he doesn't bring even the defensive value that is what warranted the initial justification as to why you traded for him besides him having captain-like qualities during his time in Texas. So, you know, nothing personal against Marcus, but if the Mets aren't going to outright cut him, then have him ride the pine. Have him be more that veteran that can help uplift and do great in more of a mentor role, which I know he may not love at first, but I think as time would go on, he would be accepting and understanding of it, given the status of the club. And he's still getting paid the big bucks. So it's like, it's, it's, it's like, I can only sympathize with him so much. God forbid you're making 20 mil to set the bench. Okay. So I'd like 10% of that. I'll take five, you know, there you go. Perfectly fine. We take that. So Jefferson Rojas on his way to triple A, several cubes, exciting stuff there, but some more exciting news around the Mets, young players, as we got some awards handed out today. Oh, Mets minor league awards and two guys that we talked about. About when we did, what is that? So we did with a guy, Ernest stuff, Ernest stuff, shout out to him. When we talked about the Mets prospects, we were most excited about, and the guys we thought can really contribute next in 2027. Well, Mitch voice, your guy. I should, is that a, is that a, is he, he's a wordy. I like Mitch Floyd a lot. He's definitely a word. Are we claiming him as your boy yet? We can claim him as my boy. Okay. We'll go ahead. Okay. We can go ahead. Well, this is not a sarcastic. It's not, it's not just being sarcastic. Those that fall straight out of flushing. Usually when Dexter says some of my voice, the opposite means I absolutely despise the individual. So not the case today with Mitch. So that's usually that's usually the case, but it's what he was named player of the year for the organization this year as one of the best prospects for the infielder, who was hitting the cover off the ball. Oh, a lot crazy. A lot of crazy numbers. He's named organization's player of the year. Jonathan Santucci was tabbed as organization's pitcher of the year. Another good year for a lefty pitcher for the Mets here. Another year for somebody who has a ton of strikeouts and amazing numbers for Jonathan Santucci. Let's start with Mitch because the double a numbers. Oh, please, please let it rip man. The double a number there. They look fake rumble poke ponies. It feels fake when you look at this line, right? 347, 435, 17, 29 games. The guy's hitting 347. And he was batting 400 for basically like the first like north of a month. It all looked great for him. Well, Ernest was very high on him. Let's review. Oh, Ernest is like he's a lock on the roster next year. And I was like, wow. And I was like, I think Mitch will absolutely be on the team next year. But I would still argue that a million Petrie will be the first option for the things that I said. I think Petrie, they have a little bit more of a willingness to be like, we can kind of throw you in the fire sooner than maybe Mitch. To be fair, you did and you said this at the time, you were not saying that Petrie would definitively be the long-term answer there, right? But you just thought he would be likely to get a shot first, correct? Yes. Yeah. Which I thought made a lot of sense considering his profile. But, but with the way much void has been tearing the cover off the ball at the double-A level, right? And getting on base, just overall, which is something I like too. So when you look at that 430 on base percentage, I love that as well too. How excited are you about that? He has all the young prospects that we've seen here is now named play of the year for the organization. I love it. You know, especially when it's a guy that I feel very confident is going to be impacting the Mets in the major league level. Hopefully as soon as next season, you know, I think of a guy who was playing today for the New York Mets at the time. I was talking to Nick Morabito, because just a couple of years ago, he was Mets minor league, you know, offensive player of the year took him a couple of years. And now he's hopefully got all impact. The Mets moving forward in 2027 for Mitch, you know, now getting this award, I think he's going to get to the big sooner than what Morabito got. And I also think that for Mitch, you know, sky's the limit. This is another multi-tool player that came out of Michigan second round a year ago, drafted by David Stearns, the first draft pick by Stearns that year. And the rave about Mitch out of college was that obviously he had a tremendous range with his defense, uber athletic player that can run the bases unbelievably well. The bats of ball skills is something that's just going to continue to adjust. And in Michigan, obviously he had success there for sure with the bat, especially his final year or so. But to see how he transitioned from high Brooklyn this season, which can be a difficult place to hit, especially, you know, with the way that the wind blows in Brooklyn. That's why when we saw a guy like Aidan Robbins, who the Mets drafted this year, hit a bomb dead center in Brooklyn like a week or two ago. I'm like, that's kind of a big deal. People don't do that often there. Nope. So to see Mitch have solid numbers, but nothing jumping off the paper in high A to then moving up to double A and just saying, I'm just going to be a phenom now. I'm going to literally take over every single game. That's where we're at now for Mitch Boyd. And a big takeaway from that two decks is that thriving with your surrounding, right? Look at what we were just stating at the top, Jefferson Rojas, Emilian Petrie. What do these players have in common? They're playing with him. Billy Amick, who just can't stop hitting home runs now in AAA Syracuse. Another great find at the deadline for David Stearns in the Mets. So Mitch is one of these guys who he has a fantastic head on his shoulders. And I don't say that lightly. You remember the last time I told you that Carson Benz ran all over it. So if I'm saying that about a player, there's a great reason for it. And Mitch has not only, I think, all the media training already, the charismatic personality, the one that's not going to be too high or too low, and someone who's clearly thriving with the fact that the Mets are looking at him as a top prospect that he now is. Because when they first drafted him, he wasn't nearly as coveted as he has now been over the past year. Talk about skyrocketing. Every year we see prospects blossom, really make a name for themselves. Mitch Boyd has comfortably done that this year. So the thing I was looking at, you went back to him hitting in single A Brooklyn. And I said, okay, what's the home runs like for him there? 11 home runs. Now people look at his numbers and say he only had two in double A. I don't care about any of that. The OPS was 947. As I said, the on base, which is impressive to me at 430, he's hitting just under 350. And there's almost like a 40, 50 game difference too. So the power may have come if the season was continuing. Right. You might have seen some of that too. To me, what it was just, he's got the bats, the 118 at bats, no small sample size, right? But the guys can hit, you can get on base. It's, you gotta be excited about this. If it could be a complete hitter. And maybe this is the part that Ernest was so excited about, right? Because maybe he's one of these true complete hitters coming up that you want to see from the Mets and the power will come. I think you'll see the power as he gets more comfortable at that level. But to make that jump isn't easy. And so I love that you brought that up too. That jump that he made in season, also not easy. And guys that can just hurt you in various ways. That's the most important thing. We've been talking all year. Versatility. Ever since I met you Dex, we've been talking about what do the Mets need to do better? Something that the Yankees still struggle with. And that's having proper fundamental ball, proper young players that are multi-tool talented. You're not just relying on a big home run swing. No, they could kill you on the bases and kill you with defense. And Mitch has all those qualities. So hopefully for his sake, he continues to trend upward because he's absolutely going to be in that conversation pretty much immediately, depending on what second base will entail for the club as we get into the next year. Now, Jonathan Santucci, who we also talked about and was on my list of prospects that could impact the Mets next season, 157 strikeouts. That's more than one Dex. That was tied for the third most across all of Major League Baseball. Now, we just saw a guy last year lead all of, I said Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball, excuse me. Soon enough, it'll be Major League Baseball. All of Minor League Baseball in strikeouts last year, Jonah Tong. We saw that as a power pitcher. Now, Tong obviously had some things to work out, has worked in that. We've just seen him back up in the big leagues again this year, late here in September. But Jonathan Santucci, power pitching lefty, has had some of his issues with walks early in the season, has cut that down. And now you see him win this award. This is another young pitcher, another lefty. We've seen Zach Thornton come up and do his thing that Mets fans should absolutely be excited about. Oh, no doubt. I mean, again, I've said it every single time I talk about Jonathan, but heading into the year, I was so confident that he was going to be the next Southpaw called out by this Mets team. All the credit in the world to Zach Thornton, a leapfrogging the way that he did, because Zach's a bulldog. But here's the thing. Why can't we have more of a great thing? We have one Southpaw that's cooking his homegrown talent. Now, let's have the other and Jonathan Santucci, because Santucci's game is somewhat similar and also different than Thornton. You know, they both work quick, but Santucci is known for the velocity bit more. Zach is tapping more into 95, which is exciting. That means that things are trending upward for him with velocity. But Santucci can comfortably sit there mid to high 90s on you, which is great. And his ability to not only pound the strike zone, but to really dominate to get the swing and miss. That's the thing. Like Zach Thornton's game is still developing as to how much is he going to be a power pitcher or is he going to be one that's just trying to induce fly outs or ground outs the way that he's doing it. For Santucci, he wants to strike you out, Zach. That's the game. And you love to see that, especially when he has the velocity and the authority with his off speed and breaking pitches on the mound to set everything else up. So when we look at the rotation configuration for 2027, it really now begs the question, what does this mean for Jonathan Santucci, who had a roughly 12K per nine this season? The minors do a sub five walks per nine. Again, the numbers fluctuate that we saw throughout the year as a total on his ERA was just under four that we saw across both levels, but really picked it up when five shutting his latest outing at the time I was talking. I believe no walks or at most one to six strikeouts. At least he looked good for Jonathan. It's really about is he someone that can crack this team straight out of camp next year to be in their rotation? Do the Mets want to position themselves where they have another young, unproven starter from the jump impacting them? Can he do enough to say sway the Mets and say, Justin, we're to be like, you know what, Jonah, you've been definitely trending the right direction. But Jonathan is a more polished product. Is that the route that they would like to go? It's a great question that we have a problem to have. It's a great problem to have. I still think I wouldn't carry. We talked about this in one of our previous episodes. I wouldn't have carried. I won't carry too many young pitchers right on the roster in the twenty twenty seven. We I think both still agree they've got to go get themselves a frontline starter or at least at least one true frontline star. Yeah. Yeah. To take some pressure, as I've said, off of these pitchers. Yeah. But if you to your point, if you've got pitchers like Santucci pushing other guys and dare you say we are sitting here in offseason saying, huh, should we the Mets, should they go with Santucci? Should they go with Thorin? Like you see now Thorin, who's made his case to stay in the rotation. It's a good problem to have. You're going to need a lefty. And if you got one of these young lefties or who knows, maybe start Santucci in trouble. You keep him in Triple A. Thorin falters, gets hurt. Or what happens with Shaman if he's still on this team, right? Spinal year of his contract is getting paid twenty five million dollars. He's kind of showing us that while he can provide length, you're not necessarily going to get the best quality there, right? How much is Sean going to factor into the Mets future plans of success? How much will his contract outweigh maybe what their plan is to build for the future? That's a really big question that we don't have the answer to right now that will be imperative to figure out when the time is right. That question kind of goes along with the Marcus Simeon question that you brought up as well too, right? Because how much are you going to deal with these guys or you're paying a lot of money when you have guys that either are ready or appear to be ready soon, right? That's going to be a big question but here's the thing. When you got young guys that appear to be close to being ready. I'm not saying that they are ready folks but close to being ready. It's good because you've got competition. As we said, it's good. We talked about healthy competition and you have things that can push the organization forward to making some decisions that should be best for this organization. That's what I want to see. Santucci, love his stuff. Still think there's more for him to develop just like Mitch Voight is there too but I think all in all, when you come from the Subway series and the Mets, you want to say it was disappointing. I don't think it's personally disappointing considering how this year's went. It's actually just so emotionally checked out as am I. You guys know I'm usually like screaming my head off and like granted, you know, people can attest to this. I was yelling as soon as Ben Rice hit that home run but then afterwards I was like. You calmed down? I calmed down. I'm like, I'm not, I just grilled the kid and then you just kept it moving. I just grilled the kid, exactly. Yeah, no, I've been emotionally tapped out since April which is unfortunate and that's why I'm hoping that next season is the opposite because I want to live and die with each pitch, Dex. I want to be an absolute mess here in the best way possible because we're really letting our true emotions, you know, come out and seep out. I didn't get to see you get too frustrated this year. No. Now I think about it. We'll have to do a whole review but I saw a lot of calm words. You haven't seen me piss since Mendoza. And if that was you pissed, I thought that was pretty calm. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, that's nothing. Anyone that knows me knows that's nothing. Yeah, that's a good point. You were annoyed. You were irritated. That's the way I put it. You were irritated. I'm like, we're really still doing this, huh? Like week after week after week after week. End this already. That was your vibe. All right, we're going to end this episode. Let us know what you thought about the Subway Series. Let us know what you thought about the Subway Series. The Mets losing two out of three. Was there anything that encouraged you there? What do you think about Jefferson Rojas getting promoted to AAA and what do you think about the Mets minor league awards? Mitch Voight getting player of the year. Jonathan Santucci getting pitcher of the year. Wardy not being irritated. I think that's a good thing. I guess so. I guess. I guess. It's it's good. It's good for now. Let us know what you think in the comments. That's going to do it for this edition of Straight Up Flushing. Also remember, we will be back with more for you tomorrow because myself and Wardy were going to be at Citi Field for the return of Pete Alonso which should be fun. That that one might be emotional Dex. We'll have to wait and see. That that one that might that might actually take the cake. Wait can I I gotta ask you this question I was going to ask you. I didn't ask you on the last episode. We'll sneak this in. Go ahead. Do you think Pete Alonso is going to hit a home run? I think he's going to hit two at least. At least two? Maybe not both tomorrow but I think he's going to hit two. That sounds like you want to be irritated. No I just I'm like if I if I'm Pete Alonso going back to Citi Field I'm thinking one of two ways. I'm either thinking I'm going to be unbelievably emotional. It's a big deal coming back here. The fan base is obviously going to give me a big ovation. Huge ovation. It's it's going to be a big deal and those emotions may get the best of me because of it. Or it's the latter which I think will be the case. He'll be emotional but he's going to have a fat chip on his shoulder and he's going to be like you really decided not to lock me up when I'm your home grown home run king. Look at the leaderboard. I literally am the best home run hitter in this entire organization's history. Stole my prime and I'm going to remind you exactly why you shouldn't have favored those analytics over what I'm going to be which is hopefully for his sake a future Hall of Famer. So you said two home runs in the game or two home runs in the series? Two home runs in the series. I think it's very realistic for Pete and if he doesn't do it then I think it's a complete opposite of a series where he doesn't do anything where he's just like kind of like Juan Soto's return to the Bronx. He just kind of couldn't do too much. Okay we'll see. We'll see. I see at least one home run. I'm going to go one. I'm going to see one. And you know what's going to happen when he hits that home run? You're going to think the Mets hit a home run with the ovation that he's going to get. That's what's going to happen. Mets fans are not going to boo him. I wonder what people will say after he hits a home run. Is that going to then turn into some chance for David Stearns? Not for David Stearns. Against. Let's clarify that. Directed towards him. There will be sides stating things along the lines that David Stearns probably wouldn't appreciate. You know that just that feels inevitable. I'm confident we're going to see that. If you see a home run in the first at-bat it wouldn't shock me. Who's pitching tomorrow? Don't even know. Let's actually double check real quick. Hey if Pete Alonso hits a home run in his first at-bat back at Citi Field would that shock any Mets fan out there? Give it to me. It's Jonah time. That's all folks. I've got nothing else. I'm not saying it's going to. Let's lock in Jonah. He's not your teammate anymore Jonah. Don't think about it Jonah. We'll be there. We'll see you tomorrow for my good guy Tyler Ward. I'm Dexter and we'll catch you next time. Another edition of Straight Outta Flushing. Peace.