2024 Player Spotlight: Brandon Sproat BINGHAMTON, N.Y. – When Brandon Sproat joined the Mets Double-A Affiliate, the Bingham - ton Rumble Ponies, on May 13, he started his Double-A career with three strong starts. In his Double-A debut on May 15 against Bowie, he allowed only three hits over five scoreless innings. Over his next two starts, he went seven innings and did not allow more than three runs. The Sproat start that electrified the baseball world though, provided Mets fans with boundless excitement, and put him on the national map was on June 2, a Sunday evening 5:05 p.m. start against the Harrisburg Senators, the Washington Nationals Double-A Affil - iate. On a hazy, overcast evening in Binghamton, Sproat allowed just one hit over seven scoreless frames, issuing just one walk and striking out a career-high 10 batters.
Right from the get-go, Sproat was in com- mand, striking out Robert Hassell III and JT Ar- ruda on 100 mile per hour (mph) and 101 mph fastballs. Sproat then went to a 91 mph chan- geup to strike Andrew Pinckney out swinging. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound right-hander would go on to strikeout the first five batters he faced, as he began the second getting Dylan Crews and Brady House swinging on dastardly changeups. The 23-year-old Sproat would go on to retire the first 11 batters he faced; the only baserun -
ner allowed was via a Pinckney single with two outs in the fourth. Sproat, now the Mets #5 prospect on MLB Pipeline and 95th in all of baseball, faced only one batter over the mini- mum over seven innings. Adding to the excitement of the start was that Sproat was throwing to Mets catcher Fran- cisco Alvarez, who was with Binghamton on a rehab stint. “It’s definitely super cool to throw to a big-league veteran, kind of pick his brain on how he thinks and how he works”, Sproat said. “Definitely super cool and super fun to throw to him.”
When I spoke with Sproat the Tuesday after that Sunday masterpiece, he spoke mat- ter-of-factly about how he was feeling. “I mean I knew the ball was coming out good, [but] I didn’t think it was coming out that well, it’s not the first time I’ve been up in triple-digits, so it was no surprise there.”
At the same time, he has a very humble approach to each outing. He talked about “controlling what I can control; I can’t con - trol strikeouts, I can’t control what they do with the ball, I just stick with my approach. The way I look at it is ‘hey this is your only
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