Rehabilitated NY Mets prospect is the most must-follow player in spring training

Life comes at you fast. It seems like only yesterday David Peterson was making his New York Mets debut in the weird year that was 2020. Now he’s about to enter his final year before free agency. Where has the time gone?

A year can go by so fast that you can almost forget about how you felt about a certain athlete when they debuted. It was in early 2024 when the Mets did something atypical and promoted Christian Scott to the major league roster. It was the first week of May, things hadn’t yet spiraled out of control.

Scott made 9 starts, one more than Nolan McLean did in 2025. It wasn’t outstanding. He had an 0-3 record, 4.56 ERA, and just 7.4 K/9. It was probably about what you’d expect from a rookie pitcher called up prematurely getting his feet wet. Scott is back from his year of recovery. He will, by far, be the most interesting player to follow this spring.

What makes Christian Scott a must-follow this spring?

Scott would need a lot of dominos to fall into place to make the Mets Opening Day roster. Because he is coming off of such a major injury, the likelihood of him heading back to New York City with the Mets seems slim. He’ll go to New York, just upstate to Syracuse.

Scott has more innings of MLB experience than he does in Triple-A. 9 starts each, he logged only 42.1 frames for Syracuse in 2024 versus the 47.1 in the big leagues. He’s green, but his 27th birthday looming in the middle of June does come with a little bit of hurry-up.

No longer a youngster trying to make it, the lost year puts a little bit of urgency in place with Scott. Add in the fact that this year should start slowly for him in terms of volume, just getting through the whole schedule is important.

Notably, Scott spent a good part of his amateur career working as a reliever rather than a starter. This could be one way the Mets save up innings for him this coming year. His 87.2 innings in 2023 is the most he has ever thrown at any level. Regular short starts to begin the year in the minors followed by some longer ones as the year progresses is one logical approach to take.

The Mets shouldn’t completely pull the plug on him being a starter even if dreams of Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong in the 2027 rotation are already occupying two spots. The Mets are always going to need multiple arms and Scott’s minor league optionality will come in handy regardless of his exact role.

An impressive spring from Scott puts him back on the radar as one of the most important pitching prospects the Mets have. The next wave of arms have started to knock on the door. For the sake of his health, expect a quick hook on him this spring if things are going badly. If things go well, start to think about all of the possibilities of where he can fit in by May.