A season in which the Mets are playing out the string before even the All-Star Game arrives belongs in the trash.
But in that garbage can, there are items that can be dusted off and preserved for a future that looks far less rancid than the present.
In A.J. Ewing, the Mets might have discovered their leadoff hitter and center fielder — a remarkably valuable combination — for the better part of the next decade.
And for at least several seasons, it looks as if Ewing will be tracking down fly balls to help out Christian Scott, who has bounced back from surgery to look like a fixture in the Mets’ rotation.
The two youthful standouts stood out in Wednesday’s 6-2 victory over the Royals, during which the Mets rode a five-run eighth — the run-scoring work all coming with two outs, courtesy of a bases-loaded drilling of Jared Young, a Brett Baty single, a wild pitch and a Francisco Alvarez single — to win just a second game at Citi Field in their past nine.
Ewing continued to look more than comfortable both against big-league pitching and atop a lineup, stepping up as the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the first and redirecting a grooved fastball 420 feet to center for the only run the Mets would score until the 11-batter eighth, in which Ewing helped the cause by serving a double to left-center on a 2-for-5 night.
A 2023 fourth-round pick out of an Ohio high school, Ewing is 21 and the seventh-youngest hitter to appear in the majors this year.
He seems to be only getting better, adding power to his game and with an OPS above .900 over his past 33 games.
With his partners on the grass — 23-year-old Carson Benge, who extended the eighth-inning rally by turning a 1-2 count into a 10-pitch walk, and signed-through-2039 Juan Soto — the Mets look like at least one part of their team is settled.
“It’s a dynamic outfield with young kids playing alongside of the best hitter in the game, and the young kids play the game the right way,” interim manager Andy Green said before the Mets (39-54) won a third game in their past four. “I think a lot of people, from the scouts that found them to the people that coach them, helped those guys take steps forward, and now they belong in the outfield. They know it.”
Scott, meanwhile, might have been forgotten about last year, when the trio of Nolan McLean, Brandon Sproat and Jonah Tong teased that they might be the future of the rotation in Queens. McLean will be, Sproat is in Milwaukee and Tong in Triple-A Syracuse, while Scott, fully rehabbed from 2024 Tommy John surgery, has asserted once again that he belongs.
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On Wednesday, the 27-year-old threw five shutout innings in which he let up just three hits and walked one while striking out five, slicing his ERA to 3.10 in 12 starts.
Scott still will have to take steps in achieving length — he needed 90 pitches to record 15 outs — but walking just one represented progress for a righty who entered walking 4.6 per nine innings this season.
