Laura Albanese: Mets' Nolan McLean deserves Rookie of the Year consideration, despite rough start to season

You can probably start to pencil in Reds first baseman Sal Stewart for National League Rookie of the Year, and there’s an excellent argument for why he deserves the honor.

Going into Wednesday, his 107 RBIs led all of baseball, with 31 homers for good measure. And though he was being challenged by Cardinals defensive wunderkind JJ Wetherholt, the second baseman went down with a wrist injury in late August that’s cost him valuable time in his bid to measure up to Stewart’s offensive output.

Granted, there’s a chance you looked at Stewart’s wins above replacement and it gave you pause: Per Fangraphs, his 2.5 WAR is actually fifth among qualified NL rookies, mostly due to defense. Primarily a second and third baseman throughout his minor-league career, Stewart is among the worst-fielding first basemen in baseball — a role whose WAR is already routinely docked because it’s considered a sub-premium position.

And if you’re following the Mets, you might be intrigued by who’s ahead of Stewart in WAR, even if you’re not particularly sabermetrically inclined. Sure, Wetherholt is ahead of him, but so are Carson Benge and, maybe more interestingly, Nolan McLean.

I’m not arguing that McLean’s 3.1 fWAR makes him superior to Stewart, though I’m not immune to the concept. I’m arguing that McLean, who probably has three to four starts left to his season, has the potential to do something pretty astonishing — become an 11th-hour dark horse for Rookie of the Year despite a tempestuous start to his season.

That would be a pretty big deal — not just because of the personal accolade but because the Mets’ recent success negatively impacts their chances at drawing a top-6 pick in the draft lottery. If they don’t get awarded a top-6 pick, the Mets will automatically be docked 10 spots in the draft because they’ve surpassed the final luxury tax threshold. If they do, those 10 spots get docked in the next round.

But they’ll get a boost there if McLean — who has a better shot than Benge at winning, per oddsmakers — can slip through the margins and further into the discussion. Winning Rookie of the Year nets them a Prospect Promotion Incentive reward, meaning a bonus draft pick after the first round — a not insignificant prize for a team whose payroll has cost them 10 draft spots since 2023.

So, what would he have to do to merit serious consideration?

Well, he’ll have to be at his very best and reach a few important benchmarks that, while challenging, are attainable.

McLean has a 3.06 ERA, having gone 11-8 in 28 games. He’s pitched 161 2⁄3 innings while racking up 179 strikeouts, with a 133 ERA+ (meaning he’s 33% better than the average major-league pitcher). Stewart has a 118 wRC+, meaning his offensive production is 18% better than average.

And since posting a 4.21 ERA through the end of May, the righty has done a complete turnaround, posting a 2.27 ERA in the 16 starts since — the fourth lowest among all qualified major-league pitchers in that span. If he continues on this trajectory, he has a shot. Throwing 175 innings would help, as would reaching 200 strikeouts while getting that ERA below 3.00.

Hitting all three would actually make his season statistically superior to what Jacob deGrom did when he won ROY in 2014. In fact, it would likely make his season statistically superior to any non-Paul Skenes pitching ROY since Jose Fernandez won in 2013.

For now though, the odds are long: As of Wednesday, Stewart was a -700 favorite to the second-place McLean’s +600, per ESPN, translating to a little more than a 14% chance of the pitcher winning the award.

The thing is, it’s just not all that easy for a pitcher to win Rookie of the Year, and I’m of the belief that there should be separate categories for position players and pitchers. Sure, there was that outlier season in 2024, when Skenes and Luis Gil both took home the award, but both had stiff competition in Jackson Merrill and Colton Cowser despite Skenes finishing third in Cy Young voting. If you want further proof, look at Michael Harris II handily beating Spencer Strider, his 154 ERA+ and his 202 strikeouts in 2022.

Looking at the current picture, consider Guardians pitcher Parker Messick and his very uphill battle against the Tigers’ Kevin McGonigle (Messick’s fWAR is 4.4 to McGonigle’s 4.8, but the latter has an almost 80% chance of winning ROY, per ESPN).

But none of that’s changing any time soon, and that means it’ won’t be enough for McLean to be good over the next few weeks; he will have to be elite. Either way, in a season that started off as roughly as it did for him, the fact that this is even a conversation is an achievement in itself.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.