Matthew Allan, Photo by Ed Delany of MMN

The New York Mets were back in action on Monday afternoon against the Washington Nationals in a game they lost by a score of 9-5. The big story coming out of the game was Matt Allan’s 2021 debut.

Allan is the Mets’ top pitching prospect and has been leaning on Jacob deGrom and Marcus Stroman all camp long for advice. The 19-year-old’s fastball was sitting at 96-97 mph according to MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo and he “got multiple swings and misses on his four-seamer”.

Allan came into the game in the sixth inning, tossing just one inning and allowing an earned run on a fly ball that was dropped after Alex Avila doubled off of him to get into scoring position.

He did get Kyle Schwarber to ground out and Starlin Castro to strike out swinging in his sole inning of work. His stat line doesn’t look great because he technically allowed three runs but that was because second baseman Jake Hager made a fielding error that continued the inning. Allan then threw a wild pitch which got two runners into scoring position who were later driven in by Hernan Perez.

In other prospect news, infielder Mark Vientos got two hits in both of his plate appearances and came around to score both times. Hager clobbered a three-run home run in his only at-bat and Brett Baty went 0-for-2 in his first Grapefruit League start.

Taijuan Walker is on the mound for the Mets on Tuesday against the St. Louis Cardinals. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10 p.m. ET and can be seen on SNY.