David Stearns admitted Tuesday that the Mets would be “fooling not to consider” the promotions of top pitching prospects Jonah Tong and Brandon Sproat for the playoff push, even in bullpen roles.
But the team president is not yet ready to commit to such moves, even while needing more length from their major-league starting staff.
“I’m not gonna rule anything out,” Stearns told Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman on The Post’s “The Show” podcast.
“We haven’t made any firm decisions yet of what our rotation looks like going forward, what starting pitchers could be involved in that, what pitchers could go to the bullpen. We’re gonna take this turn by turn. We do have guys with track records in our rotation and I do think that is important for us to know. But we need to do it, and certainly over the last month we haven’t gotten the consistent quantity out of our starters that we would like.”
The Mets already brought up righty Nolan McLean from Triple-A Syracuse in August, and he has posted two wins and a 1.46 ERA over 12 1/3 innings in his first two big-league starts.
The 22-year-old Tong has registered 179 strikeouts and a 1.43 ERA in 113 2/3 innings in 22 starts spanning two minor-league levels this season.
The 24-year-old Sproat hasn’t fared as well with a 4.50 ERA in 25 games at Triple-A, including his first relief appearance last week.
Asked if he’s open to bringing either or both to the majors, even if used out of the bullpen, to maximize the organization’s best possible 14-man pitching staff, Stearns responded, “I think that’s a very fair question.”
“Once you get into these last days of the year and certainly into the playoffs, how to structure a staff, yeah, the priority is who are our 14 best pitchers? And how do we structure a major-league pitching staff that allows us to get outs at all parts of the game? ” Stearns said.
“And so, at previous points in my career, we have used top starter prospects out of the pen and it’s at times worked pretty well. Not necessarily committing to doing that here, but we’d be foolish not to consider it.”
Stearns also explained that Sproat’s recent appearance out of the bullpen was a planned opportunity to acclimate him to entering a game behind an opener more than an audition to be transitioned to a relief role.
“Starting with the Sproat situation, that was not a shift to the bulpen that I think it may have gotten misinterpreted too much,” Stearns said. “If you look at how we handle our Triple-A starters throughout the year, periodically we do ask them to pitch in behind an opener, because that is something that we at times do in the big leagues.
“We did it with [Blade] Tidwell when he was up earlier, and also we never know what role we are going to need someone in. So having these starters with the experience of not running out onto the field with their team in the first inning, there’s some value to that, so this was prescheduled for Brandon. I know it made a lot of noise, but this had been coming. He was going to pitch behind an opener because it was his turn to do it.”
