“People think of history in the long term, but history, in fact, is a very sudden thing.”
—”American Pastoral,” Philip Roth
With two weeks left in spring training, it’s been a quiet camp for the Mets. That’s the way any team prefers it.
“There’s a lot of good things happening here,” manager Carlos Mendoza said Sunday. “We’ve got to keep it that way.”
Here is a non-exhaustive list of guys opening eyes in Port St. Lucie:
A.J. Ewing
Mendoza has positively glowed about Ewing this spring, bestowing the ultimate compliment on him.
“He’s a ballplayer,” Mendoza said before Friday night’s game in Jupiter. “There are a lot of ways he can help a team win a baseball game.”
Mendoza looked prescient when Ewing singled, stole a base and made a diving snag of a sinking line drive in left field in that night’s game. Mendoza was especially impressed by the catch, pointing out that a superb jump on the ball made it possible in the first place.
Ewing added a two-run single off lefty Ryan Weathers in Sunday’s game.
For the spring, Ewing is 5-for-14 with six RBIs. He’s looking more and more like someone who can help out this season if needed.
A.J. Ewing got off to a quick start this spring, earning raves from manager Carlos Mendoza. (Rhona Wise / Imagn Images)
Luis Robert Jr.
Robert still hasn’t played in a Grapefruit League game, with all his work coming on the back fields and mostly against lesser competition. That should change this week, with the Mets tentatively targeting Thursday for a Robert debut.
Still, the team’s enthusiasm for Robert has only grown during the last couple of weeks here. The tools speak for themselves, but Robert’s swing more closely resembles what it was during his best season in 2023. And when he has faced better competition, be it a Nolan McLean on the back field or a Sean Manaea in a live BP, he’s hit the ball hard.
“He’s in a good place right now,” Mendoza said. “You just watch him take batting practice, and the way the ball comes off his bat is different. He could be special.”
Carson Benge
Benge is having precisely the kind of spring training that wins a rookie an Opening Day job. It’s not just that Benge has found some solid results — seven hits in 20 at-bats — it’s that he has never looked overmatched at the plate, with consistently strong at-bats.
That’s what Mendoza said he was looking for coming into the spring. Benge has looked fine in the outfield as well, and it was interesting that the Mets gave him a look in center on Sunday. Previously, Mendoza had said they were focusing only on right field for Benge. But the manager said Sunday he was working through potential looks and thus wanted Benge and fellow right-field competitor Mike Tauchman to get some time in center. (Tauchman will play there on Monday.)
Chris Suero
The athletic Suero had a nice year in 2025, especially at High-A Brooklyn, where he posted an .837 OPS with 13 homers and 25 steals in 74 games. Suero spent most of his time last season as a catcher, but he can more than hold his own in the corner outfield and at first base — as the speed on the base paths suggests.
Suero felt he matured significantly last year — in trusting his approach at the plate, in working through his slumps and in learning how to plan for and call a game when behind the plate.
He carried that into the spring before being sent back to minor-league camp, showing that impressive defensive versatility.
Ryan Lambert
It’s not just the triple-digit velocity on Lambert’s fastball that jumps out; it’s the carry.
“Induced vertical break” is the analytical term for how a fastball appears to defy gravity and rise as it nears the strike zone. In actuality, it’s just not falling as much as the average fastball, and Lambert’s heater is the rare combination of elite velo and elite induced vertical break.
The average four-seam fastball has just under 16 inches of induced vertical break. Lambert’s this spring have averaged between 19 and 20 inches. That would rank right near the top of the sport last season, close to teammate Jonah Tong.
The only pitchers in baseball last year to pair a fastball of at least 97 mph with an average of 19 inches of induced vertical break were Milwaukee’s Trevor Megill and San Diego’s Jeremiah Estrada. Megill had a 2.49 ERA and 30 saves out of the Brewers bullpen; Estrada posted a 3.45 ERA and the sport’s fifth-highest reliever strikeout rate (35.5 percent) for the Padres. The point is, good company.
Jack Wenninger
The next guy up in the pitching pipeline, Wenninger, has shown why he’s moved onto some top-100 prospect lists entering 2026. The 2023 sixth-rounder out of the University of Illinois has struck out 10 in 6 2/3 innings this spring, including five in a three-inning appearance Saturday against the Cardinals. In that game, he impressively preserved a one-run lead late by inducing a ground-ball tag play at home and striking out the final batter.
It was a nice rebound after Wenninger walked five batters in 1 2/3 innings his previous time out.
Wenninger made 26 starts and threw 135 2/3 innings at Double-A Binghamton last year, posting a 2.92 ERA.
“I know my stuff’s good,” Wenninger said. “I just want to go out there and show it and prove that I can compete with these guys out here.”
Wenninger’s offseason focus was on creating separation between his four-seam and two-seam fastball. Providing their pitchers with at least two distinct fastballs has been a priority for the Mets organization over the last few years.
Wenninger should start the season at Triple A. Along with Christian Scott and Jonah Tong, he figures to get a call to the majors at some point this season when the Mets need a starter.
Inside baseball
Perhaps nobody in baseball has as keen an eye at the plate as Juan Soto. So what can Major League Baseball’s new challenge system do for Soto?
Soto didn’t challenge a call in the Grapefruit League before leaving for the WBC. (He was 4-for-4 in challenges last spring, when MLB was experimenting with the ABS system.)
“We’ll see if it plays to my advantage,” Soto said. “For me, I’m going to try to focus on what I’ve been doing the past years and trying to do damage with that.”
But …
“I trust my eyes big-time,” he said. “It’s not a ball all the time that I think it’s a ball, but most of the time, when I see it and think it’s a ball, mostly it’s a ball. It’s a good amount of times that I think it’s a ball and it’s a ball.”
Last season, Soto took 59 called strikes outside the strike zone, according to Baseball Savant. (That’s not necessarily representative of how the strike zone will be called this year, when it’s more tailored to each player and will be measured from the center of home plate.)
That ranked seventh in the sport. I looked at all 59 to see how often Soto appeared to question the call. He had a few different tells — tilts of the head, pauses in his routine, and plenty of looks at the home-plate umpire.
After watching all 59, here were my five favorite Soto reactions:
The Jolt (v. Lucas Sims)
The Pause (v. Jesús Luzardo)
The Long Head Tilt (v. Zack Wheeler)
The Stare (v. Zack Wheeler, again)
The Point (v. Max Fried)
Overall, Soto showed displeasure with 38 of the 59 missed calls. I also looked at 50 pitches near the border of the strike zone that were correctly called strikes (according to Baseball Savant). Soto indicated disagreement with 17 of those calls.
Injury updates
Francisco Lindor has been hitting in the cage the last week and remains confident he can be ready for Opening Day. While Lindor typically gets 50 to 60 at-bats during spring training, he said he cares less about the total number of at-bats he can get this year than about the quality of them. That’s a feel thing, Lindor said, and one he can achieve by stacking several at-bats on the back fields if necessary later in spring.
Robert Stock, who’d pitched well in camp as a veteran non-roster invitee, was diagnosed with arterial thoracic outlet syndrome. Stock will have surgery next week. He’s hopeful he can be back before the end of the season, though that is optimistic.
Brandon Waddell was scratched from his scheduled Monday start with shoulder fatigue. Waddell is still throwing; the Mets just wanted to back off on game intensity for the lefty.
A note on the epigraph
“American Pastoral” is, pretty easily, my favorite Roth novel.
Trivia time
The last time the Mets played the Pirates on Opening Day, they were also breaking in a new first baseman, second baseman and right fielder. What year was that, and who were those three guys?
(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)