ATLANTA — Brett Baty is officially the new kid in the Mets’ clubhouse.
The 22-year-old, wearing a jersey number that matches his age, stood in a small room in the lower level of Truist Park on Wednesday and explained everything that’s happened to him over the last 24 hours.
“I got the call yesterday, got on a flight and got here last night,” Baty said. “I’m just super excited to get out there and start playing.”
He mentioned that the original plan was to have him join the Mets on Tuesday, but air travel has a way of ruining plans.
“I didn’t make the first flight, so here I am today.”
Baty said that not putting any big expectations on himself will be key. He also said, very diplomatically if not entirely truthfully, that getting called up to the big leagues wasn’t on his mind at all. In a very polished answer far beyond his years, he told reporters that winning games for the Triple-A Syracuse Mets was his main focus until getting the MLB promotion.
For the first game of Baty’s career, he will bat eighth and play third base behind Max Scherzer. There are very few debut scenarios that could be more intense than a Mets-Braves series with the two division rivals separated by 3.5 games, but the injuries the Mets have suffered over the past week didn’t afford them the opportunity to shield Baty from the spotlight.
“It’s what every kid dreams of, for sure,” Baty said. “To make my debut against the Atlanta Braves, playing for the New York Mets, is truly a dream come true.”
As a minor leaguer for both Double-A Binghamton and Triple-A Syracuse, Baty was still able to keep one eye on the big-league club. According to him, though, his mind didn’t immediately think he was next in line after Eduardo Escobar and Luis Guillorme went down.
“I saw the injuries, but I wasn’t really paying attention to that,” Baty said. “I was just going out there every single night and trying to get better at baseball.”
The youngster from Austin, Texas, said the best advice he’s gotten was from a hitting coach who reminded him that the game is the same in the big leagues as it is everywhere else. He also got some encouragement from the Mets’ center fielder.
“As I was coming in here, [Brandon] Nimmo took me aside and was like, ‘Hey man, slow it down. It’s going to be a pretty big atmosphere, for sure. But we all trust you out there. We have your back,’” Baty said. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
Buck Showalter praised Baty for being receptive to instruction and said that he kept things pretty low key with the third-base prospect before the game as to not overload him with information.
“He’s a big boy,” Showalter said. “He understands what’s ahead of him.”
ESCOBAR TO INJURED LIST
The Mets placed Eduardo Escobar on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to Aug. 16.
His left oblique strain has been an interesting one, as Escobar hurt it on Friday, sat out on Saturday, then was forced into the game on Sunday when Guillorme’s injury occurred. On Monday, he started at third base, but with the team deciding that Baty is ready to roll, Escobar will get some time off.
“[Tuesday], I came in, and we were going to work on swinging from the right-handed side,” Escobar said. Hitting right-handed against left-handed pitchers is both the switch-hitting Escobar’s strength and the main thing that’s been hurting him recently.
“I started to feel it a little bit more,” he said. “That was when I decided there was no way I could go into a big-league game and hit lefty on lefty. That’s not the player that I am. I’ve never done that. In order to make sure that we were going to have this heal the right way, we decided to just take the ten days.”
COOKIE NOT CRUMBLING
Carlos Carrasco spoke about his own oblique injury, which was diagnosed as a low-grade strain with a probable three to four week return.
“So far, I’ve been doing a lot of exercise, a lot of recovery,” Carrasco said. “I like to work a lot, so I’ve been doing a lot of recovery.”
Carrasco said most of his work has been with medicine balls and exercise bands, trying not to make the oblique any more “angry.”
“I just want to get back in there and pitch. There’s nothing I can do. The main part is keeping my arm going.”
WALKER GETS MRI
Taijuan Walker got an MRI after leaving Tuesday’s game prematurely.
“Pretty good news, all things considered, on the MRI,” Showalter said. “I think the Sunday start is in jeopardy, but we’re still going to hold out hope. We’ll just kind of go day-to-day right now. If you had told me last night when we left here that we’d be where we are with it, I would’ve taken that.”
Walker was not made available for comment before the game, so Showalter was asked to disclose the results of the MRI.
“I’d get thrown in medical jail for that!” he incorrectly stated. “What is it, HIPAA? What is that? What does that stand for?”
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