Soto, Holmes give Mets fans a taste of what could be in spring opener

Two of the Mets biggest offseason signings have notable spring debuts. Plus, how good it is to have baseball back, even if it doesn't count yet.

What’s up with the Mets? 🌴

• The Mets kicked off their Spring Training season with a 6-2 victory over the Astros in Port St. Lucie (box)

• RF Juan Soto crushed a home run (1) to center field in his first spring at-bat with the club, and went 1-for-2 with two RBI

• RHP Clay Holmes also made his Mets spring debut, allowing zero base runners while striking out three batters over three innings (34 pitches)

• 1B Pete Alonso drew two walks in his only two plate appearances, and won the first ever Mets balls/strikes challenge to prolong his first at-bat of the game

• C Francisco Álvarez went 1-for-3 with an RBI in the victory

• New York drew 7,394 fans at Clover Park on Saturday afternoon, their second-largest spring home opener of all-time

• Former Mets LHP Johan Santana attended camp on Saturday morning and worked with Sean Manaea on different pitch grips (SNY)

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Rumor Mill 💨

• The Astros have restarted trade talks for Cardinals 3B Nolan Arenado, who is reportedly willing to waive his no-trade clause despite blocking a deal earlier this offseason (MLB.com)

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Today’s Game 🗓️

GAME 1

Match-up: Mets SS (1-0) vs. Nationals (1-0)

Where: CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches – West Palm Beach, FL

Starters: RHP Ty Adcock vs. LHP Shinnosuke Ogasawara

When: 1:05 PM EST

Where to Watch: MASN

GAME TWO

Match-up: Mets SS (1-0) vs. Marlins (1-0)

Where: Clover Park – Port St. Lucie, FL

Starters: RHP Max Kranick vs. RHP Sandy Alcantara

When: 1:10 PM ET

Where to Watch: SNY

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It’s good to have Mets baseball back, even if it doesn’t count… ✍️

For those of you who are over the doldrums of the winter at this point in late February, Saturday afternoon at Clover Park in Port St. Lucie, Florida, offered a lot of promise of what lies ahead.

Those initial cracks of the bat and pops of the mitt are the first signs that we are marching closer to warm weather and real baseball. For now, though, “fake” baseball is more than enough to wet our whistles and pique our interests. Yesterday did more than enough to satisfy the masses of Mets fans entering a season that has more anticipation than any other in recent memory.

Saturday’s Grapefruit League opener really had everything you could want if you’re a Mets fan – the first true look at new acquisitions in the orange and blue, the debut of a brand-new uniform, a pissed-off Jeff McNeil, eye-popping home runs, and an impressive starting pitcher performance, all in front of a buzzing sellout crowd.

The debut of a new, highly anticipated offseason acquisition is always one of my favorite parts from early Spring Training. Yeah, these games and results aren’t real, and all of these “firsts” get flushed down the toilet and ultimately forgotten once the actual games start, but it’s just such a cool feeling to watch a new guy do actual baseball things in your team’s uniforms for the first time.

Many of us knew the Mets were going to go hard after Juan Soto for years once Steve Cohen purchased the team back in 2021, and even though it’s been close to three months since the club signed him to a record contract, there are still parts of it that haven’t felt real.

But after Saturday’s exhibition contest against the Astros, we’ve seen it in action for the first time. There’s Juan Soto, draped in the orange and blue for the first of many times over the next 15 years, crushing a home run to left-center field in his first spring at-bat in the Mets organization.

It may not count, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome to see. And it’s not just because it helps it all feel that more real to Mets fans, but it gives you photographic evidence of the hope everyone has going into the 2025 season and beyond.

And then, of course, you had another big offseason addition make his spring debut in Clay Holmes. I don’t ever put much of any stock into spring results (even if it does confirm my previous biases), but it’s hard to ignore the pure stuff we saw from Holmes on Saturday.

From the eye test alone, Holmes showed you why David Stearns and the Mets pitching lab felt that it was worth the gamble to sign him as a starting pitcher and transition him away from the bullpen. We’ve always known Holmes had filthy stuff as a late-inning reliever, with a devastating sinker and big, breaking sweeper, but one of the biggest questions has been the ability to grow beyond being just a two-pitch pitcher.

Holmes began adding a four-seam fastball to his repertoire late last season with the Yankees — which he only threw four times yesterday — but all eyes are going to be on if he’s going to be able to develop that change-up, which he’s really never had.

Yesterday was the first we got to see that pitch in action, which Holmes refers to as a “kick change.” Because it’s a new pitch, Baseball Savant has not yet properly recorded it in their pitch summaries, though I would expect that update will come soon. In the handful of times we did see the pitch (as pictured in the GIF above), it looked pretty damn effective.

Gary Cohen: That change-up from Holmes is kind of a new look.

Ron Darling: Yeah, you talked to him about it, Gary. It’s called a “kick change,” because he doesn’t really pronate his arm when he lets go of the ball so it doesn’t really turn over. So he kind of spikes one of the seams and gets that to tumble to make sure he gets that ball to run away from the left-handed hitter … It’s a really interesting pitch.

I say every year that Spring Training gets old fast, and inevitably we will reach that point. That time may come in the next couple of weeks, or even by this time next weekend. The games get sloppy, that shimmer of the new Mets additions will wear off until the real games start, and you’ll just be hoping for this team to escape the state of Florida without any significant injuries. It happens every year, and that’s okay.

But right now it’s just good to have baseball back, man. Even if it is of the off-brand variety, we can still enjoy this for what it is and for the feeling that it provides us with…

Hope.

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Around the League 🚩

• Braves LHP Chris Sale, the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner, threw a pair of perfect innings in the club’s 3-1 loss vs. the Twins

• Red SS Elly De La Cruz homered from both sides of the plate in Cincinnati’s win over the Guardians

• Giants top prospect Bryce Eldridge crushed a 450-foot home run in his first game of the spring, as San Francisco beat the Rangers, 6-1

• Former Mets RHP Chris Bassitt acted as the Blue Jays ball boy today and wore a custom jersey with the number “4-10” to reflect his record in fantasy football last year (MLB)

• Dodgers RHP Bobby Miller appears to have avoided serious injury after being struck in the head with a 105.5 MPH line drive on Thursday (MLB.com)