PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Harrison Bader said this about as well as it can be said. Bader, the new Mets center fielder, has experienced the full gamut of emotions a baseball player can feel. Two years ago he was the toast of October, the one Yankees standout in a season that ended in frustration in the ALCS.
A year ago, early, he was making a genuine case about being a part of the Yankees’ plan long term, a dynamic fielder with a knack for timely hitting. Then things cooled off for Bader, and then he got hurt, and now he is a Met, hoping to replicate what he was able to be during his year and a half with the Yankees. It’s not an easy thing, trying to do all of that on a stage as public as baseball in New York City.
“The game is hard,” Bader said Tuesday, after seeing his first game action of the spring. “That jersey can get heavy.”
Tylor Megill knows that every bit as much as Bader does. This is Megill’s fourth season with the Mets, and he has seen the extremes, too. Two years ago, subbing for Max Scherzer on Opening Day in Washington, he threw five shutout innings against the Nationals. A year ago, filling in once more for a future Hall of Famer when Justin Verlander couldn’t pitch the home opener against Miami, he again threw five solid innings, allowing two runs, striking out seven.
Moments like this can be clarifying for a pitcher on the make, valuable evidence that he belongs, that he really can trade punches with major league hitters and win those battles more often than he loses them. But they can also be profoundly frustrating, too, when command abandons them, when their velocity dips, when their body betrays them.
When the game bites back.
Megill has known that part of it, too, enduring long stints on the IL each of the last two years, sometimes losing touch with the strike zone, sometimes having a knack for delivering the exact wrong pitch at the exact wrong time. No mystery there. The game is hard. The jersey can get heavy.
“I have had some highs and I have had some lows,” Megill said Tuesday at Clover Park, after continuing a strong spring by throwing three scoreless innings at a sparse Yankees lineup, striking out six, walking only two, in a game the Mets would win 5-4. “I’ve learned to live in the moment. Take the experiences you get and try and focus every day.”
For a third straight year a door has been left ajar for Megill, and there is another opportunity to forge a place for himself in the Mets’ rotation. The loss of Kodai Senga until May means the Mets need a fifth starter for at least a month, and he has aced the audition so far, allowing only one run in eight innings. Of all the candidates for that job, Megill is the one the Mets would prefer, because he’s done it before.
“I feel good,” Megill said. “Everything feels good right now.”
When he made his first splash two years ago, Megill dazzled with a fastball that regularly ticked 99 on the gun, and he won his first four decisions in 2022. Then biceps tendinitis knocked him out for two months and a brief late-season audition in a bullpen role went nowhere.
Megill won his first three decisions last year and was 5-2 on May 18 before things went sideways for him, pitching to an ERA close to eight until he was sent down to Syracuse in late June. He rejoined the rotation when the Mets purged their high-priced Scherzer/Verlander duo, and had an effective close to the season, pitching to a 2.76 ERA in five September starts.
He showed up to spring training with a new pitch in his arsenal, a splitter with which he’s still fiddling, though he said Tuesday, “I’m getting pretty comfortable with it.” The Mets could use Megill bringing that confidence north with him again this year, because they’re in need of as much as they can find.
“He came to camp ready to compete,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “We’re going to count on him.”
Megill wants that, too. When you’ve tasted success in the bigs, it makes the spasms of sourness all the more bitter. The game is hard. The jersey can get heavy.