Minor league NY Mets signing from last summer needs to be seen to be believed

David Stearns gets a lot of credit for his under-the-radar roster additions. In a year+ with the New York Mets, we’ve seen everything from big league cast-offs on major league deals to unknowns thrive with the organization. The latter hasn’t had any major benefit just yet but their success continues to have us screaming the praises of the POBO.

Down in Brooklyn, a guy by the name of Anthony Nunez is putting up impressive numbers. A unique career that began as a position player in the minors for the San Diego Padres in 2019, Nunez would actually begin his college career in 2022. He didn’t hit a whole lot and in 2024 began to pitch.

Seeing is believing. Unbelievably, Nunez is excelling as a pitcher in the minors for the second straight year.

Anthony Nunez is a unique story and also a Mets prospect to keep an eye on

Just to go back to college and do well as a pitcher is unique. For Nunez to return to the league and dominate other professionals adds a new layer.

The stats posted by the Cyclones last week to celebrate his season thus far are slightly outdated. Hitters are now 3 for 44 against him with 24 strikeouts in his first 14.1 innings. He has been absolutely dominant at home. Only a single hit against him in Coney Island, which happened to be a single, plus 16 strikeouts in 29 plate appearances has made him the most feared part of playing in the ballpark; even more so than the wind off the bench sending 380 foot home runs over the right field wall into the gloves of outfielders.

His latest outing, the one where he gave up 2 of his 3 hits this year and surrendered his first run while also taking the loss, was hardly a full-blown collapse. A double, a single, and a walk was the damage done in that game. It was coming off of 1.2 perfect innings two days prior when he struck out 4 of the 5 he faced and earned the win.

Unique stories like Nunez’s help him more easily stand out from the crowd of major league hopefuls all over the minor leagues. Thoughtfully deploying him as a reliever may actually be the best way to have an end result of seeing Nunez make the majors. He won’t be a Shohei Ohtani but perhaps a future Kenley Jansen with an even more engrossing journey?