PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Eight starts. It’s the statistic pessimists point to when discussing Nolan McLean’s potential. People within the New York Mets firmly push back on the idea that McLean’s sample size in the major leagues last season is too small to extrapolate much from: 48 innings, 2.06 ERA/2.97 FIP, 57 strikeouts, 16 walks.
They saw plenty more.
Mentality. Competitiveness. Confidence.
And depth of repertoire.
These things set McLean apart, Mets coaches, executives and players say.
To better understand McLean’s aptitude for pitching after giving up on being a two-way player less than two years ago, The Athletic recently sat down with the 24-year-old and asked him to analyze each of his six pitches.
Nolan McLean is thoughtful about each pitch, as well as how he mixes them up to keep batters guessing: “It’s also being able to play the swings.” (Eric Hartline / Imagn Images)
Four-seam fastball
2025 MLB usage rate: 13.3 percent
Whether on the mound or football field, McLean could always sling it.
“I’ve always had a good arm,” he said.
He first realized that his fastball was different, he said, when he arrived at Garner High School in North Carolina. From there, he has increased his velocity a tick or two miles per hour each year. With the Mets last season, his four-seam fastball sat at 95.8 mph. His hardest pitch was timed at 98.4 mph, a ball. He did not throw another pitch harder than 97.7 mph.
McLean eyes more.
“I like where my average is at, like, 94, 95 is fine with me on average,” McLean said. “I would like to be able to either create a little bit more ride in my four-seam or a few ticks of velo to have late in the counts just to be able to get above guys’ barrels. I do a good job getting under guys’ barrels. It’d be nice to get above them every now and then, too.”
Relatively speaking, metrics suggest that McLean’s four-seam fastball doesn’t ride much. McLean’s ability to throw his four-seamer off of his sinker using nearly the same arm angle, however, helps the perceived ride or illusion of a rising pitch. Given that combination plus his offspeed pitches, any improvement in his four-seam ride or added velocity is a bonus.
To that end, club officials said in late January that McLean was already touching 98 mph.
Sinker
2025 MLB usage rate: 27.9 percent
Around the minor-league All-Star break in 2024, McLean talked with Mets vice president for pitching Eric Jagers in what ended up as a pivotal conversation about fastballs.
McLean remembered telling Jagers, “I show ride every now and then on my four-seam, but it’s not consistent enough to really set guys up like I want.”
At the time, McLean’s effectiveness on inside pitches against right-handed batters was also lacking.
He told Jagers, “It’s hard for me to get my four-seam in there without losing its shape.”
Jagers suggested mixing in more sinkers.
“It turned out to be a better pitch than my four-seam, for the most part,” McLean said.
When McLean threw sinkers in college, he said that he “didn’t really know” what he was doing with them. He was trying to pronate. With the Mets, McLean learned about pronation versus supination bias. He considers himself a supinator. McLean’s supination with his sinker helped produce its wipeout, left-to-right movement at an average of 94.8 mph.
After the talk with Jagers, McLean started sprinkling in more sinkers. Last year, around spring training, McLean ramped up the usage. By the time he arrived in the majors, it had morphed into his go-to pitch.
In his major-league debut, McLean struck out Mariners star center fielder Julio Rodríguez on a sinker. Later in the game, Rodríguez walked over to McLean to say, “Nice sinker.” McLean said his favorite thing to do is land his sinker for a called strike. With his sinker, McLean gets plenty of called strikes.
Out of McLean’s six pitches, Baseball Savant assigned the sinker the highest run value. It is a particularly important pitch against right-handed batters. It protects his sweeper and changeup. The way McLean sees it, “chasing more ride” with his fastball “would be awesome,” especially from his low release point, but consistency there has eluded him. If that ever changed, he said, perhaps he’d lean more on his four-seamer. In the meantime, dotting the strike zone with a nasty sinker isn’t a bad consolation.
Cutter
2025 MLB usage rate: 8.5 percent
By his estimate, McLean experimented last year with about 12 different grips for his cutter.
He finally settled on a cutter grip that allowed him to use a lot of leverage with his forefinger and thumb. The key for McLean is trusting his natural supination to allow the ball to move to the left. When he forces the ball to go left, the pitch turns into more of a slider with less vertical break, which isn’t what he wants.
Hence why he says the cutter is a pitch he is constantly developing. Over the offseason, McLean worked on refining it, particularly commanding its right-to-left movement. People within the Mets noted the pitch had more zip, which is important for McLean.
McLean’s cutter was essentially his slider in college. At Oklahoma State, he threw fastballs more than 90 percent of the time. He never focused on offspeed pitches. Once in a while, he’d deploy a pitch to play off his fastball. That’s the genesis of his relationship with the cutter.
The shape of the pitch still resembles a gyro slider. Really, McLean said, he just calls it a cutter so as not to get confused with signs. The velocity helps distinguish the pitch as a cutter; he throws it at around 91 mph. Also, he said he has demonstrated an ability in the past to register an induced vertical break at around 10 inches, which is more of a cutter shape. The average right-hander cutter, around 91 mph, gets an inch more drop than McLean’s pitch, but research has shown that the side-to-side movement is more important.
The cutter stands out as a fascinating pitch for McLean because it could further evolve as a trustworthy option against lefties and righties. It might be his best pitch against lefties, which is critical because McLean’s walk rate was three times higher in his MLB stint last season against left-handed batters than it was against right-handed batters. Before McLean’s final start last season, he’d thrown his cutter to a right-handed batter just three times over seven outings. In his final outing, a start against the Chicago Cubs, he used it against a right-handed batter four times.
The next step for McLean is further mixing his cutter against both left-handed and right-handed batters, getting it in a place where he can tunnel other pitches off of it.
Sweeper
2025 MLB usage rate: 25.7 percent
In college, McLean threw a sweeper without knowing what a sweeper was. All he was trying to do was create more movement with his cutter. When McLean talked with Mets officials at the draft combine, they told him he was throwing a sweeper.
McLean said, “I was like, ‘What is the sweeper?’”
The Mets officials explained to him that the pitch was essentially a distinctly horizontal slider. McLean didn’t need much more information. From there, McLean and the pitch took off. Few pitchers feature a higher average spin rate on the sweeper.
“I’ve always had a unique ability to manipulate the ball how I want to, just seeing lines in my head, trying to match those lines with what I see,” he said. “And so, once I figured out, OK, this is what people are looking for, I’ll find something that works for me, and I’ll be able to repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.”
Only a handful of starting pitchers used a sweeper last season at a higher rate than McLean. It is unusual for a starter to rely on the pitch as a main slider. Then again, McLean’s sweeper, at 85 mph with 16.8 inches of break, is especially nasty.
McLean is quick to point out that, as attractive as the pitch looks and for all his ability to throw in the strike zone, batters hit his sweeper.
“It’s kind of something I’m known for, but it’s also been the pitch I’ve given up the most damage on as well, which makes it a risk-reward thing, but it’s something I am comfortable with,” McLean said. “I can’t lose confidence in something over a few swings. You kind of have to look at the overall effect. There’s a lot of foul balls on it, a lot of takes on it to left-handers, and just my ability to throw it for strikes.
“There are some days where I’m sweeping it a lot, and some days where it’s a little bit shorter, and on those days where it’s shorter, I just go out there and throw it, try to execute it the best I can. It’s also being able to play the swings. If it’s something where it looks like they’re all over it, then I might not rely on it quite as much. But being able to sprinkle it in and just have something with a bigger movement and be able to keep velo up is big for me.”
Changeup
2025 MLB usage rate: 8.7 percent
Mets starter Clay Holmes inspired McLean’s sweeper grip. The veteran right-hander (also someone with supination bias) is also the backstory behind McLean’s kick-changeup.
Late at night around the All-Star break in 2024, McLean scrolled on his phone with the intention of finding something to improve his changeup. Earlier that day, he had allowed a home run on such a pitch. He told himself he was done with it, or at least that version of it. After diving into archives of pitchers and watching social media reels, McLean discovered a video of Holmes’ changeup. It all clicked.
“Immediately, I was like, that makes sense,” McLean said. “Everybody always spikes sliders, spikes curveballs. Why doesn’t anybody ever spike the changeup? So I started trying that. Immediately, I got the movement I was looking for.”
The breakthrough was vital.
Previously, McLean’s changeup failed to produce results. He has small hands. He cannot throw a splitter. Still, he needed something that traveled downward while staying on the plate long enough to entice hitters. For batters, McLean’s previous changeup was an “auto-take” — his description. When they swung at it, left-handed batters were able to simply poke it to left field. McLean wanted a changeup to get rollovers and occasional whiffs. In the kick-changeup, McLean found what he was looking for.
At its best, McLean’s changeup imitates a Wiffle ball. It does not always cooperate with him. The key for McLean is throwing it enough to get more comfortable with the pitch. Like the cutter, a sizable chunk of McLean’s offseason was spent commanding the changeup.
“There are more go-to weapons for me in a game than getting to the changeup, but there have been times where I’ve had to throw it, and just having enough confidence in it to just rip it and not try to aim it is important,” McLean said. “I’m trying to use it as something different.”
Curveball
2025 MLB usage rate: 15.8 percent
McLean’s average curveball spin is MLB’s best.
Even as a kid, McLean threw a curveball. In college, he didn’t need a curveball, so the pitch went on a hiatus. He reintroduced it toward the end of 2024.
“It’s not your traditional curveball,” McLean said.
Since 2020, when MLB updated its Statcast technology, only two pitches boasted more total movement than McLean’s curveball last season: Rich Hill’s curveball in 2021 and Paolo Espino’s curveball in 2024. Those two pitches hovered around 70 mph. McLean unleashes his curveball at around 80 mph.
“It’s the only pitch where I can be like, OK, I am going to rip this as hard as I can, and it’s not gonna change its shape,” McLean said.
McLean likes using his curveball to get below barrels, especially when he sees batters fouling off his sweeper. The pitch resembles a slurve, and McLean deploys it to change a batter’s eye level.
“I’m constantly trying to pick lanes and times to throw it and just mess with guys’ timing,” McLean said. “Everything offspeed-wise was 85 miles per hour and above for me. I needed something that pulls the brakes on people.
“Even if they foul off, it just changes a little bit of the tempo. Or there are times where a guy fouls off a fastball and he might be slightly late on it. And it doesn’t make sense to throw something just under that velo and put them on time. So I needed something that’s slow. I don’t do good throwing softer changeups. That doesn’t work for me. And I actually experimented with slowing down the sweeper first, but that just led to uncompetitive misses for me. So I was like, all right, we’re gonna start ripping this curveball.
“It’s like the changeup; once I get more confidence in it, it’s going to be a good pitch.”