Newest Mets share plenty of connections: A breakfast club, college teammates and travel ball circuits

There are more than 670 First Watch restaurants in the United States and about 150 in Florida alone. And yes, this has to do with the Mets.

For the uninitiated, First Watch is a sort of fancier IHOP — a chain where you can get bacon and eggs with alarming speed, but also a smoked salmon frittata, or something called a “Kale Tonic.”

A.J. Ewing and Sammy Stafura didn’t go for the latter options.

“Sammy is the man,” Ewing told Newsday earlier this week in Cleveland. “We would get breakfast together before our games. We went every single day of the series, and we both got the same thing every single time.”

For those wondering, Stafura, one of the top prospects the Mets obtained at the trade deadline, is pretty sure it was something called the Trifecta, along with the traditional breakfast — eggs, bacon, waffles, etc. Because yes, friendships are forged on the diamond, but they’re also forged in square, syrup-filled crannies.

“I think his mindset [stands out the most],” said Ewing, who has been friends with Stafura since the two met on the travel ball circuit in high school and cemented their bond via breakfast rituals while playing Single-A ball in Florida in 2024 — with Ewing’s Port St. Lucie Mets facing Stafura’s Daytona Tortugas 18 times that year. “Every single time he goes out there, he’s not only giving it 100%, but I feel like he’s having fun playing the game, and I don’t think that’s something he’s ever going to lose.”

But this is more than just two guys who essentially grew up together ending up in the same organization. The trade deadline was a dark time for Mets fans, but it also created some unexpected harmony within its younger ranks — ones that include pre-baked relationships between Ewing, Stafura, Nolan McLean, Carson Benge and prospects Gary Gill Hill and Gabe Davis.

Though there’s no way to know how things will pan out, it’s not completely out of turn to look at teams like the so-called ’Nova Knicks and posit that knowing and liking your teammates from a formative age can yield positive results. Talent will always be king, but comfort and chemistry can play their parts.

“I think it’s a really good thing to go to a new place and have some established relationships, because if you don’t, it’s going to be daunting,” Mets interim manager and former farm director Andy Green told Newsday. “Those guys will stand on their own two feet in time, but it gives you so much more comfort going into a building where it’s like, I know a few people. And in a trade, especially if it’s the first trade of your career . . . it can be incredibly unsettling. To come to a place where you know guys and they want you around, I think that’s a great thing.”

Baseball, and the travel ball circuit especially, is a fairly insular community, but the ties here are more than cursory. Stafura, of Westchester, also is friends with Gill Hill, a New Rochelle native who joined the Mets in the trade that sent Freddy Peralta to the Rays. Then there’s Davis, a pitcher who came over from the White Sox in the Huascar Brazoban exchange. And you’ll never guess where Davis played in college (actually, you probably will).

“It’s definitely pretty cool playing with guys that you played with in college,” said Benge, who was on the same pitching staff with Davis and McLean at Oklahoma State University. “He’s got kind of a bulldog mentality on the mound.”

There was one season in which both Benge and McLean, then two-way players, pitched at the same time as Davis, a hulking 6-9 righthander who OSU coach Josh Holliday said via phone was “a skyscraper — a really big man with a great arm.”

And there was one game in particular that stands out.

It was March 4, 2023, and the Cowboys were playing Austin Peay — a game they won, 2-1. Benge started, pitching two scoreless innings. Davis came in with OSU up 2-0 and two outs in the eighth and skirted around a walk and a double before getting the third out on a strikeout. McLean shut the door in the ninth, allowing an unearned run and earning the save.

Davis has struggled in Double-A this year — he has an 8.31 ERA — but he still has plenty of developing to do and can touch 100 mph with his fastball. Given his massive build, he can even add to that, Holliday said.

“I know he’s nasty,” McLean said. “I faced him quite a bit when I was still hitting and he was always a really tough at-bat . . . He’s a really fiery competitor.”

And Holliday certainly can dream of a day when it comes together . . . again.

“To have three on the same team would be crazy,” he said. “But it’ll be nice for Gabe to go to spring training and know some of the faces on the big-league team. Hopefully he finishes this year in Double-A really well and maybe he can throw in some of those big-league spring training games.”

Stafura, the organization’s No. 11 prospect, is still in High-A, but he hopes to be reunited with his breakfast buddy sooner rather than later. “I’m super-excited to play with him one day,” he wrote via text.

And as it turns out, he and Ewing not only have the same breakfast order but the same hopes. Stafura called Ewing “like two minutes after [the trade] happened,” Ewing said, smiling.

“He just has a super-fun personality and is a good guy to talk to,” Ewing said. “He would be an outstanding clubhouse guy and he’s a guy I’d love to have around.”

There’s a hitch, though. If or when Stafura gets to the majors, he and Ewing will be confronted with a significant issue.

New York may be one of the greatest restaurant cities in the world, but the closest First Watch is in . . . gasp! . . . Paramus.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.