In the fourth round of the 2023 MLB Draft, the Mets selected right-handed pitcher Austin Troesser out of Missouri. Troesser, 21, spent all three years of his collegiate career at Missouri as both a starter and reliever. Overall, he notched an 8-5 record with a 4.98 ERA in 77 2/3 innings over three years.

Troesser stands in at 6’3″ and 189 pounds with a mid-90s fastball and a good curveball. Troesser, a product of Jefferson City, Missouri, grew up less than an hour away from the Missouri campus in Columbia. Now, Troesser begins the next chapter of his in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where Troesser said he expects to begin his professional career before the 2023 MiLB season ends.

Troesser sat down with me to discuss his first impressions of the Mets, what he expected as the 2023 season ended, his personal goals for the start of 2024, and what Mets fans can expect from the 21-year-old righty.

Being drafted was a “dream come true and a crazy experience,” he said, but he is excited to live out his dream of when he was “a little kid just thinking about it, and now you’re one step closer to your goal of being a Major Leaguer.” He described being drafted as an “unreal” moment for him and his family.

Getting Drafting and Starting His Career

He said the draft process started last fall by meeting with scouts, whether it be on Zoom meetings or in one-on-ones. For him, the process slowed down after the fall until the summer of the draft, and he had a few more meetings, went to the combine, and he had more in-person meetings there. He credited his agent with keeping the process smooth and understandable, making the process more understandable.

I asked Troesser what he can bring to the table for the Mets, and he mentioned that he thinks he can bring “a lot of untapped potential.” He continued that he thinks he has a “lot of stuff left in me, and I think that getting into a professional organization and getting into a consistent training routine will help me a lot, and it can help me unlock my potential here at the Mets.

“I would say that I am a very hard worker; I put my head down and just grind. You can expect me to work hard and make sure things are done right.”

Troesser also had goals for the 2023 season despite being drafted in mid-July. As a three-year pitcher at an SEC school, Troesser has much more experience than many of the pitchers selected in the 2023 draft. He said that he wants to start despite throwing a year in relief for Mizzou. He said he believes he is a starter, and he feels that the Mets are building him up to be one. He said after being drafted that, he was throwing two bullpen sessions a week and was excited to get into his first games as a professional. He made one appearance for the FCL Mets, striking out the side in one scoreless inning on August 22.

He said he is excited to work with the coaching staff in St. Lucie and find out what he needs to work on this offseason. The organizational pitching coaches, he said, have given him a “personal plan” for training, giving him drills and workouts to complete. He is striving to gain weight and fill out his form, trying to “get bigger, get stronger.”

Working in the Pitching Lab

Troesser got to work firsthand with the Mets’ new pitching lab, calling his impression of it “awesome.”

“The lab is a bunch of bio-mechanical sensors and Trackman and video and all of that, just to kind of analyze more and get deeper into stuff so they can actually see what is going on,” he said. “My first impression when I got [to Port St. Lucie] was overwhelmed because there were like 50 people that I had to talk to. Pitching directors, pitching coaches for different spots, like a rehab pitching coach, and guys like that. It was kinda crazy.”

Troesser said his biggest goal for this off-season is to gain weight. “I need to meet with the nutritionist before I leave for the off-season and figure out how to tackle that,” he said. He said his target weight is between 200 and 210 pounds, making him at least 11 pounds away, as Baseball Reference lists the righty at 189 pounds. Second, he plans to attack whatever plan the Mets hand him for the winter. “I want to fix some mechanical tweaks, some delivery stuff to make everything more efficient, but that’s pretty much it. Just tackle what they give me.”

Troesser will enter the spring in his final days of being 21 and will have just one professional inning behind him. However, the fourth-round pick has big plans and high hopes. He prides himself on his hard work and is looking for the hard work to pay off in the future as he works to become a major league starting pitcher.