What Mets pitching prospect Matt Allan's second surgery could mean for his future

It has been a long couple of years for Mets pitching prospect Matt Allan. 

In 2020, minor league baseball was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although Allan did get some work at the alternate site in Brooklyn. In 2021, right before the minor league season was set to start, Allan underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery.

The target throughout the winter was for Allan to make his in-game return this July, according to organizational sources. However, Allan underwent nerve transposition surgery in January that makes it likely he will miss the entire 2022 season.

Nerve transposition surgery is not always required, but it is a common procedure to have post-Tommy John surgery. Both Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz needed the surgery and came back just fine from it.

Assuming recovery goes as expected, Allan should return to full health in 2023, when he will be turning 22 years old shortly after minor league Opening Day that year. That puts him in line as the age of a college senior, which still gives him plenty of time to develop and become the pitcher the Mets hope he can be.

When he is right, Allan has the potential to be a No. 2 type of starter with a plus fastball that will touch 96-97 mph with good life on it that he can elevate for swing and misses. I actually believe his best pitch is his power curve that he will throw in the 82-84 mph range with a sharp downward break. 

The last time Allan was throwing, the Mets were impressed by the progress he made on his changeup that flashed above average with fade away from left-handed hitters.

While this follow-up surgery isn’t a drastic alteration to Allan's timeline, it definitely at least brings up some questions which are fair to ask.

Assuming he does not pitch in 2022, how many innings will Allan be limited to in 2023 after missing three full years of pitching? There was lots of criticism of J.T. Ginn, who took most of the year in a “normal” Tommy John rehab to bring his velocity back. What will Allan’s stuff look like in his first year back?

After 2023, Allan will need to be added to the 40-man roster to protect him from Rule 5 eligibility. The Mets presumably would not want to leave him unprotected and risk losing him to a bottom team that is willing to just toss Allan into the bullpen for a year to get that type of talent into their system. 

That would be a long play for the Mets, taking up a valuable 40-man roster slot, because if all goes well he will not have much more than 100 professional innings under his belt -- and wouldn’t have much of a chance to impact the big leagues in the imminent future.

I ranked Allan as the No. 6 prospect in the Mets' system with an MLB ETA of 2025, and had him as the second highest ranked pitcher behind Ginn, which led to some debate. My logic was that while Allan has the high ceiling that I noted above, he has some questions that will only be able to be answered in time, and I feel the floor is significantly lower than that of Ginn’s given where we currently stand in their respective careers.

I am not ready at this time to move from that 2025 ETA projection, but Allan is going to have to come back healthy from this and hit the ground running in 2023. If there are further delays, then we are having a different conversation. 

Since being drafted in 2019, Allan has only thrown 10.1 professional innings, and he will go three full years between pitching in a professional game.

With that said, the upside is still so tantalizing, and in speaking to sources in the organization about Allan’s work ethic, I would not bet against him coming back strong.