![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Channing-Austin-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTens of millions of kids across the world grow up playing baseball. A small fraction go on to play professionally, and an even smaller fraction of those players get to play where they grew up.\n<\/p>\n
Channing Austin is one of those players.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty crazy,\u201d Austin said. \u201cIt feels like I\u2019m going to high school. I drive past my high school every day on the way to get here. I drive past all these fields that I played at.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
A Prospect Lefferts Gardens native, Austin has an apartment with two of his friends in the borough where he grew up. He said he was a Yankees fan as a kid, but went to more Mets games.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prospect Lefferts Garden native Channing Austin is excelling for the Cyclones<\/p>\n
\u201cI really like the Citi Field atmosphere,\u201d Austin said. \u201cI just thought it was really special. The food is amazing, the energy of the ballpark, that\u2019s why you go to a baseball game.\n<\/p>\n
Austin went to Poly Prep Country Day School, playing baseball on a field about four miles down the road from Maimonides Park. He\u2019s still involved with the school, Poly Prep general manager Matt Roventini said, and comes by often to work out. While he\u2019s there, he\u2019s a resource to the kids who are where he was just a few years ago.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always nice to have a kid that has done it, been there, done that, and is willing to give his knowledge to the younger guys,\u201d Roventini said.\n<\/p>\n
With no traffic, the drive from Poly Prep to Coney Island can be done in under 15 minutes down the Belt Parkway. Whenever he pitches in a home game for the Cyclones \u2014 especially on the weekends \u2014 his family and friends come out to watch. He has so many people who want to come see him pitch that he has to go around the locker room asking his teammates if they have any tickets to spare from the ones every player gets to give out.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly just feel the strength, people you love that believe in you so much, and you don\u2019t really feel much pressure to prove them right in any way,\u201d He said. \u201cI just feel love from them.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Austin has been by far Brooklyn\u2019s best pitcher so far in 2026. In eight starts, he\u2019s thrown 38 and \u2153 innings to the tune of a 1.17 ERA and 1.10 WHIP with 48 strikeouts. The walk total is high, but he\u2019s done a good job of keeping the traffic on the basepaths from scoring.\n<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a full-fledged starting pitcher now, a stark change from what he was just a few years ago.\n<\/p>\n
After pitching for two seasons at Poly Prep and losing his senior year due to COVID-19, Austin went to the University of Virginia. He only appeared in two games as a freshman and then transferred to the University of Southern California, where he appeared in 16 games as a Trojan over two seasons, with a Tommy John Surgery sandwiched in between.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
In his entire college career, Austin appeared in 18 games, all in relief, throwing just 15 and \u2153 innings. He threw another 43 and \u2153 innings across four different summer ball seasons, but even then, that adds up to just 58 and \u2154 innings over four college seasons.\n<\/p>\n
The Mets, who signed him as a free agent following the 2024 MLB Draft, see him as a starter. In 2025, his first full season, he threw 74 innings.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see an athlete,\u201d Cyclones pitching coach Luis Alvarado said. \u201cWe see a guy that has a really good repertoire. He has really good control of the offspeed, an extremely good fastball, and we wanted to give someone like him a chance to be able to showcase what he does for a longer period of time.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Austin throws a fastball that averages 93-94 mph and has hit as high as 97. It has a lot of ride and run, and Alvarado said he recently threw one that clocked in at 95 mph with over 20 inches of IVB and 17 inches of arm-side run.\n<\/p>\n
He rounds out his arsenal with a curveball, slider and changeup, all pitches that have either been developed from scratch or seen their shapes change significantly since arriving to the Mets. His curveball, for example, has changed from a pitch that broke straight down to one that breaks down and to the left with the goal of getting more swing and miss.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI really only had a fastball when I signed,\u201d Austin said. \u201c[The Mets] helped me develop a four-pitch arsenal. It\u2019s pretty platoon neutral; I can face both sides with all four of my pitches. I worked hard, and they gave me an opportunity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Austin said he just tries to throw the ball right down the middle, because he knows the pitch won\u2019t actually go there. The goal is to let the hitters get themselves out. Then, when he gets into a favorable pitchers\u2019 count like 0-2 or 1-2, he\u2019ll attack the hitter with his offspeed offerings.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Alvarado, who was with Austin for most of the season in 2025 in St. Lucie, said he\u2019s seen the young starter come back from this offseason in amazing shape with the necessary adjustments made to be successful.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been more in zone, especially the off-speed,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cI think he took a huge step from last year, where he was mainly fastball in-zone, to this year being able to execute the curveball, execute the slider in zone, and sprinkle in the changeup to get strikeouts.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
He has impressed his coaches with his work ethic and willingness to learn.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEven on the outings that maybe he didn\u2019t do well \u2026 he was so positive, and every day he came out and was eager to learn,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cAnd I think he took everything he did last year, he didn\u2019t forget how it went, took it into the offseason, he worked on everything he needed to work on \u2026 and then he brought it into the season.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
That\u2019s something that goes back to his high school days as well, and was something Roventini, who was the head coach at Poly Prep while Austin was there, emphasized.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had to work through some command issues, which I think all young kids have to do,\u201d Roventini said. \u201cBut he worked really, really, hard and diligently. He\u2019s a really smart, smart kid, and so he always asked a million questions. He always wanted to know why.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The positive attitude and willingness to be open to anything he can learn from is something Austin echoed.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a college guy who is out here and has pitched 300 innings, played third base in high school, didn\u2019t pitch much in my college career,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery time I go out there, I\u2019m just getting experience pitching, just stacking games and experience, and experience. There\u2019s a quote that I love, it\u2019s like, \u2018When the goal is experience, everything\u2019s a win.\u2019 Every outing that I have, I can take something from. Before every outing I have, I learn something, I enter a new situation that I haven\u2019t been in before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tens of millions of kids across the world grow up playing baseball. A small fraction go on to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-240878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}