RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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On Tuesday night against the Atlanta Braves, following a clunker of an outing his last time out in Cleveland, Nolan McLean allowed just one hit through six innings.
Unfortunately for the right-hander, that one hit, a home run by Ozzie Albies , was enough to beat him and the Mets who were shut out against Martin Perez and the Braves bullpen in a 4-0 loss .
Any other day, especially lately as New York’s offense has been red-hot, McLean’s outing would’ve been more than enough to earn him a win. Still, he and interim manager Andy Green were pleased with how he threw the ball.
“He was great,” Green said. “I thought he bounced back early from being behind consistently and he managed to get out of those in the first couple of innings, avoided hits early because of that.
“Pitched behind more than he’d like to or we’d like him to, [but he] really found his groove there for a while. Just great six innings of work. One pitch that I’m sure he wants back.”
That one pitch to Albies, a fastball up, came on a 0-2 count and while the result is frustrating, particularly in that exact spot, McLean tipped his cap to the infielder who has tortured the Mets for a while.
“It was fairly executed,” the rookie said about the pitch. “I mean I wasn’t trying to really punch him by any means for a strikeout there, but I would’ve liked it slightly more elevated but he made a good swing on a pitch that was pretty close to the outside corner so tip my cap.”
While that was McLean’s only blemish of the night in what has been a sensational rookie campaign, the right-hander is still looking to improve.
In fact, when asked to take stock of the body of work during his first full year as a starting pitcher in the majors after he made his MLB debut on Aug. 16, 2025, McLean was more interested in looking towards the future instead of reliving the past.
“There’s still a lot of work to do I think,” he said. “Still a lot of games left, too, in this season and I wouldn’t say that the body of work is finished. I can learn every time I go out there and each lineup is completely different, too.
“So I think it poses a good challenge every time I go out there, how to navigate lineups multiple times through the order and I guess the goal is to keep learning from that.”
However, for those wondering, McLean is 13-9 with a 3.07 ERA (1.11 WHIP) through his first 32 career starts. For comparison’s sake, Dwight Gooden had a 2.60 ERA in 31 starts during his rookie season in 1984.
Of course, McLean began his career last season when he burst onto the scene with a 2.06 ERA in eight starts in the middle of a playoff race. So, with more experience and time in the majors this year has he begun to settle into a rhythm?
“It’s always a work in progress I think,” McLean said. “I’m constantly tweaking it to figure out what works for me. And sometimes it’s different, you can’t be super self-conscious about it if you don’t get everything in and just trusting that it’s gonna be there every five days.”
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