Laura Albanese: Mets' Christian Scott turning into reliable asset

SAN DIEGO — Luis Torrens looked momentarily confused.

After a pitching performance, it often can be useful to ask the catcher what he saw out there. So what did Torrens see in Christian Scott’s sweeper Friday night (a pitch that Scott had just said was not up to his standard)?

“The sweeper is a plus sweeper,” Torrens said via interpreter after the Mets’ 5-0 win over the Padres. The perplexity in his voice needed no translation at all.

OK, fine. But for argument’s sake, say there was something off with the pitch. What do you think Scott saw?

Torrens appeared to search his internal database.

“Sometimes it can stay in the zone a little bit, sometimes it doesn’t,” he added. “He’s one of the guys that works at it. It’s one of his better pitches and I thought today, actually, it was pretty good.”

Torrens knows his stuff, and he certainly knows a good pitch when he sees one. But the exchange further illustrated the high standard to which Scott holds himself, and it’s one that’s served him very well — one that appears primed to turn him into a steady anchor for this rotation down the stretch.

He allowed no runs, three hits and two walks with three strikeouts in 5 2⁄3 innings Friday night, earning only the second win of his career and second in a row.

You read that right: It took three years and 77 2⁄3 innings for Scott to get his first major-league win. He was injured in the midst of the Mets’ magical 2024 run, rehabbed from Tommy John surgery while they collapsed in 2025 and waited until late April to get another shot at the majors.

He’ll turn 27 in a few days, so by rookie standards, he’s not young, and the long layoff was mentally daunting. But that’s motivation, not an excuse, and because Scott is never quite satisfied, he used his time on the shelf to ripen.

He tinkered. He added a cutter and a sinker, giving him a five- or sometimes six-pitch mix. And it’s made him wilier.

The cutter largely replaced his slider, giving him a higher velocity option against lefthanded batters. The lesser-used sinker is utilitarian rather than exceptional, another fastball that he can throw to confuse righthanded batters.

“In 2024, I was kind of like a two-trick pony,” Scott said, referencing his fastball and sweeper/slider combination. “To be able to have multiple options to get righties in, lefties out, for me [is helpful]. I know when one pitch isn’t going well that day, I’ve got another option to lean on, so that’s been huge for my confidence overall.”

In his mind, “I didn’t have the best stuff” Friday, he said. Still, he threw that sweeper a whole lot more than he usually does, primarily because it played well off what he thought was actually working for him — a very good fastball.

It ended up being Scott’s third straight strong performance — a span in which he’s averaged about 5 1⁄3 innings and pitched to a 0.55 ERA.

Now remember this: Scott struggled when he was first called up in late April. He walked five batters in 1 1⁄3 innings against the Twins and basically was handed his bus ticket back to Syracuse as soon as he walked off the mound.

But the Mets needed him, and he was back pitching on May 1, having gotten stronger since.

His 2.50 ERA is the lowest among the Mets’ active starters, and if you go by fWAR, you can argue that pound for pound, he’s the team’s most valuable healthy starter.

Wins above replacement is a cumulative stat, so while Scott’s 0.9 WAR is lower than that of David Peterson, Freddy Peralta and Nolan Mclean (1.1 for Peterson and 1.0 for the latter two entering Saturday’s game), they’ve also pitched at least 20 more innings than Scott has.

As we saw Friday, Scott also is benefiting from a defensively sound outfield keyed by Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing. The righthander has one of the lowest ground-ball rates in baseball, but because he induces poor contact (i.e., weakly hit balls launched at suboptimal angles), fly balls don’t translate to high home run rates, and he’s allowed one homer all year. Couple that with a solid outfield and good things can happen.

Above all, though, Scott is best when he’s “attacking hitters,” Carlos Mendoza said.

“It’s sustainable,” he added. “We believe in him and even that first [time] we had to send him down, the messaging was, ‘You’re going to be back here. You’re too good of a pitcher.’ And I’m glad that it worked out and here he is. He’s a big part of this team and he’s a big part of this rotation.”

Even when he (personally) is not feeling his best.

“Fastball location was huge for me today,” Scott said Friday. “I was just trying to battle sweeper location there, but I thought I did a really good job of [moving] the fastball in and out there to keep them off balance . . . just enough to get some outs.”

What was Mendoza’s assessment of that pitch Friday, by the way?

“The sweeper was a good pitch for him,” he said.

Well, maybe it was a good pitch. Just not good enough for Scott.

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.