Fall Ball

[Edgy MD]

The only fall baseball being played by Mets is being played by Mets minor leaguers in Arizona.  Usually, each team contributes a more-or-less equal number of pitchers and position players to their AFL squads (which they share with four other teams), but five of the eight Mets participants assigned to the Surprise Saguaros are pitchers — all righthanders.

A few of them are recent arrivees from the Great 2026 Selloff.

• Irving Cota, RHP — Killed it in the early summer as a starter in Brooklyn, posting a 0.73 ERA in 24 2/3 innings, but he hit the Injured List in early June and only scarcely worked after returning in September.  Reportedly has awesome spin rates.  Like huge.  Everybody in school is talking about it.  Signed out of Mexico in 2022 after briefly debuting in The Mexican League as a teenager.
   
• Brendan Girton, RHP — Starting pitcher who had a really strong year in 2025 with Brooklyn, but has gotten hammered over a season+ in Bingo.  Improved after moving to the pen, and when he is going well, generates them grounders.  Tenth-rounder from the 2024 draft out of Oklahoma.
   
• Ryan Lambert, RHP — Had a magical 2025 in Brooklyn and Binghamton, blowing everybody away, and flying by every metric, and then utterly lost it in Syracuse this season, pitching to a 7.71 ERA that probably should have been higher as he walked everybody in the International League.  He walked hitters while they were still in the on-deck circle.  Peanut vendors and grounds crew staffers found themselves on first base, wondering how they got there.  It was the sort of season that gets staffers fired, but that 2025 season is still fresh enough in the team's mind that he's getting a second look in Arizona.  Like Girton, he came out of Oklahoma in the 2024 draft — two rounds earlier, in fact, so I'm sure they are best friends and/or worst enemies.
   
• Peyton Prescott, RHP — Had UCL surgery shortly before the Mets made him their fifth-round pick out of Florida State in 2025, so he was always going to be a gamble, and as he has pitched all of one professional inning in the interim, anything he provides for Surprise will indeed be a surprise.  As he is almost certainly playing above his level against players with plenty of professional experience, he is likely getting this assignment to get in his work and start catching up to his class.
   
• Calvin Ziegler, RHP — The second-round pick from 2021 has been limited to 66 innings due to injuries and 46 2/3 of them were in 2022.  Reports suggest his stuff and velocity are still there, but staying healthy has not been.  Come on, you big Canadian!
   
• Cole Mathis, 1B/3B — Small college power hitter (not a small guy, but a guy from a small college) acquired for David Peterson.  Did very little — as far as appearing in games or prospering in the ones he's appeared in — since coming over from the Cubs.   He's reportedly still shaking off the effects of his own UCL surgery, but there's a reason that the Cubs picked him in the second round (54th overall) back in 2024, although maybe they just thought it was cool that his name invoked two of the 20th Century's great crooners. 
   
• Bruin Agbayani, INF —  Got in only three games after coming over from the Twins in the AJ Minter trade, due to a shoulder issue.  (You may notice a pattern here, in that the Mets seem to like their prospects pre-injured.)  Despite his name, neither he nor any family members went to UCLA, but his sister is a professional softball player.  (The Hawaiian Punch lives!)
   
• Boston Baro, INF — One of a bunch of infielders taken in the 2023 draft — a really effective weekend for the Mets as that draft has already produced Nolan McLean, Zac Thornton, and AJ Ewing, along with Brandon Sproat and Kade Morris who they traded off.  Boston has been a really efficient basestealer and solid contact hitter, but like Agbayani, has lost most of the season to a shoulder injury.

The season is already underway, with the Saguaros in third place at 3-2, and the players have produced just enough of a statistical line to speculate on, and just little enough for that speculation to be near-worthless.

But hey!  Games!

[MFS62]

Ziegler is one of my long- time-  ago adoptees and I’m rooting for him to shake off the rust and become the star I always knew he can be. 
later 
 

[Edgy MD]

Well, yesterday he gave up three runs while recording a single out, so that's not encouraging.

Irving Cota, on the other hand, threw two innings, faced seven batters and struck out six of them, walking the only other guy.

[Cowtipper]

"Fall Ball" is what I said when I was trying to will my undescended testicle to drop.