Pitcher Perfectish

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With both Tylor Megill and Griffin Canning pitching well the last few days, Paul Blackburn really needed to step it up and do better on the mound yesterday if him and his thick beard wanted to start the year in the rotation, or even on the team. And on the surface, he did as well as anyone possibly can: four perfect innings against the St. Louis Cardinals. Surely, nobody can complain about four perfect innings, right? The guy didn’t allow a single baserunner. That’s the whole pitching game right there.

Well, I don’t know what to tell you. It was the weirdest, least impressive perfecto one can possibly accomplish. Of Blackburn’s 37 pitches thrown, none were swings and misses.

None. 

Zero. 

HOWEVER…he did collect a dozen called strikes, which would be a lot for a regular start of at least 80 pitches, but 12 out of 37? Blackburn must have had the Cardinals - who brought out most of their regulars to play - totally fooled. 

BUT…even though ABS system replays were available, Lars Nootbaar inexplicably did not challenge a called third strike that, according to Statcast, hit home plate. 

(Why yes, the home plate ump was CB Bucknor, how did you guess?)

That strike out was one of two Blackburn had on the afternoon. It ended the first inning. The second inning were three balls all hit to center fielder Tyrone Taylor. Sounds fine, right? Maybe you’d prefer Blackburn to get ground ball outs instead of flyouts, but three outs are three outs. 1-2-3 inning. Easy peasy. 

You know where this is going. The first batter was Nolan Arenado. His flyout had an exit velo of 88.7 mph. Nothing remarkable. But Alec Burleson’s line out? A 105.6 mph laser hit 320 feet. Statcast gave it an expected batting average based off of those numbers of .740, meaning 74 percent of the time that’s a hit. Then Nolan Gorman hit a ball that Statcast claimed would be a home run in 26 out of 30 MLB ballparks. It had an expected BA of .920. But on March 12, 2025 at Roger Dean Stadium at roughly 1:30 in the afternoon? An F8. For good measure, Pedro Pagés hit a sharp liner right at Tyrone Taylor to lead off the bottom of the third with an xBA of .540. 

To Blackburn’s credit, he struck out the next guy and coaxed ground balls out of his final four batters, which is exactly how the end of his last start went, following the unpleasantness. He lowered his spring ERA to 6.23. God bless him, I don’t want to pick on Mr. Perfect anymore. At least I’m not Taylor, who supposedly nicknamed Blackburn “Pauly B Nasty,” which just sounds sarcastic to me. 

A.J. Minter made his Grapefruit League debut of 2025. Coming off hip surgery last August, Minter threw in a couple of live BP sessions before this outing. He put together a 10-pitch 1-2-3 inning with one strikeout. Perfect, if you will. The odds of him making Opening Day on the active roster has gone up I’d say from 50 percent to 75. His fastball sat at 93 mph, which he said he expects to tick up as March progresses (his average four-seamer went 94.5 mph last season.) He’s scheduled to pitch again this Saturday. “It’s an exciting time to be a Met,” he said.

Both Pete Alonso and Juan Soto successfully challenged strike calls (CB Bucknor was the ump, remember?). In Alonso’s case, it negated a called third strike, and on the next pitch he singled. That’s the second time he’s done that this spring. 

The Mets won the game 2-0. One run was a home run off the bat of William Lugo in the 9th inning. The other was an RBI single by Francisco Lindor. It had an exit velocity of 107.8 mph, good enough to be the second hardest hit ball of the day by either team, only losing out to a really hard hit Alonso ground out. 

Going into the bottom of the ninth, the Mets allowed just one measly hit. TJ Shook made sure the Mets wouldn’t leave Jupiter, Florida thinking they were oh so very close from potentially pitching a combined perfecto by walking two and allowing a hit. He struck out two and then got Thomas Saggese to fly out to right to at least preserve the shutout. 

According to SNY during last night’s Baseball Night in New York telecast, Mets starting pitchers this spring have a 2.89 ERA, which is 1st in MLB. It’s all fake, yet damn, 1st?! The Mets pitching lab is on fire. Figuratively, thank goodness.

Francisco Alvarez came back to Port St. Lucie yesterday after his surgery in Pennsylvania on his left hamate bone. When asked when he’ll return, he first said “Maybe six weeks”, then conceded it might be “eight”. He also said, "It's a quick recovery, so I don't think I'm going to lose strength in my hand. I'm very strong." Ah, youth. It’s not known yet if he will recover in Port St. Lucie or New York.

Dedniel Nuñez (elbow flexor strain) is scheduled to throw his first live BP of the spring today. If Minter is 75 percent likely to be active for Opening Day, Nuñez is probably 45 percent likely? Damn you Nimmo, brainwashing me into giving everything and everyone a percentage. 

Brandon Nimmo (knee injury) ran at “85 percent” yesterday and took on Astros minor leaguers in some live BP action. “I definitely think I’ll be good for Opening Day,’’ Nimmo told Dan Martin of The New York Post. “But we’ll see. I don’t know the future. If we go backwards, it can go in another direction, but I do feel good for Opening Day right now. If things progress, I should be good to go.” I wish he stopped at the first sentence and left out the word “think”. Alas. I’d say I’d rather have him at 100 percent starting two weeks into the season than at 85 percent from the jump, but something tells me he’ll never get to 100 percent before first hurting elsewhere, you know? I’d put the odds of Nimmo starting Opening Day as the DH at 67 percent.

David Allen Wright was in camp. Not only that, he was in uniform, for what he believed to be the first time since his last game as a player in 2018. He had appeared in previous springs as an “instructor”, but unlike the other alumni who showed up in that capacity, he didn’t rock the Mets light jacket and uniform pants, which makes it much more official. The Captain said he didn’t in the past because he thought he would be “another distraction.” But Carlos Mendoza called and asked him to be a uniformed instructor, and Wright obliged. That says a lot I think about the respect Mendoza has after just one year as manager.

Or maybe Wright just really likes this team. When he was asked where he’d think he’d hit in this lineup, at first he quipped, “They put the best hitter at what, second or third now?” Then he said, “I would just be happy to make this lineup.” I don’t remember him ever saying something like that before.

(I wonder if Wright still remembers Keith Hernandez telling him the night of his last game that he would have fit in with the 1986 team…but he would have hit 7th.)

The coolest story Wright told was that once upon a time, Mets leadership asked him to speak to mostly no-name infield prospects at their minor league camp. At seven in the morning. When Wright was finishing his speech, there was one prospect that approached him and peppered him with questions.

Reader, it was Mark Vientos. That’s a lesson for the kiddos: You don’t turn into Swaggy V by accident.

The Nolan McLean saga had a deeply satisfying ending yesterday. After the pitching prospect was supposed to make an appearance in a televised Grapefruit League game but he pitched three scoreless innings in the PSL backfields instead because rain bumped Tylor Megill’s start back, I was bummed out. I had never seen him pitch before. But some video of his work was uploaded to X and, oh my. This one pitch…if you’re squeamish look away, because it’s disgusting.

I found this interesting: A Kieran C. (congrats on the Oscar, Roman) asked Tim Britton and Will Sammon in The Athletic why they thought a notable number of pitching prospects hit a wall in Triple-A last season. Their answer was threefold: the baseball is literally different at that level, the Mets have been aggressive in promoting players before most other teams would consider them for ready for the highest minor league level because they prefer the kids to face challenges before reaching the big leagues, and finally, sometimes dudes just aren’t that good. 

Johan Santana turns 46 today. I wonder what Sean Manaea got him for his birthday after Santana gave him the gift of his undivided attention last month. (Speaking of Manaea: weren’t we supposed to get an update on his oblique strain earlier this week?)

Even though today’s game against the Red Sox is at Clover Park, it’s neither on TV or radio. David Peterson will get the start. Kodai Senga will start Friday night’s affair in PSL. That one will be televised.

Exactly one fortnight left.