Mauricio's 117 mph double highlights winning MLB debut

NEW YORK -- Ronny Mauricio's first Major League hit was struck so solidly on Friday night -- 117.3 mph off the bat, the hardest-hit ball by a Met in more than two years -- that by the time Mariners right fielder Teoscar Hernández recognized its trajectory, the ball was over his head en route to the Citi Field fence.

Mauricio reached second base standing up, removed his helmet and blew a kiss to his family behind first base.

It was the first signature moment in a career that the Mets hope will be full of them. Prior to the Mets’ 2-1 win over the Mariners in the series opener at Citi Field, Mauricio and Brett Baty, the latter of whom is on his third tour of the Majors but is technically still a rookie, were promoted from Triple-A Syracuse.

For the first time, those two are on a Major League team alongside Francisco Alvarez and Mark Vientos, offering some hope that the Mets -- offensively, at least -- have plenty of bright days ahead of them.

“It’s awesome to see,” Baty said. “We’ve played together for about four years now. We all understand each other’s games, and we feed off each other, too. We get a lot of confidence from each other, and that’s pretty cool.”

Mauricio finished 2-for-3 in his MLB debut, including the hardest-hit first career hit by a rookie since Statcast was introduced in 2015. Manager Buck Showalter focused more on Mauricio’s defense, highlighting a double play he started in the third inning from his adopted position of second base.

Baty contributed a single in the seventh, and the top half of the order also did its part to back Kodai Senga in another strong 12-strikeout performance.

It was another reminder of how much skill remains on this roster despite New York’s fourth-place standing in the National League East and Trade Deadline sell-off. A notable chunk of that talent is young and untested, giving the Mets reason to take a long look at it in September.

“It’s exciting to be here with Mark, with Baty, with Alvarez, because we grew up together pretty much in the system,” Mauricio said through an interpreter. “That’s the goal for all of us is to be a part of this core. That’s the main mission that we have is to be here in a sustainable way.”

For months, the Mets resisted calling up Mauricio despite his standout season, in part because they wanted him to continue improving his swing decisions, and in part because they wanted to spend more time exposing the natural shortstop to second base.

About a month ago, after demoting Baty back to Syracuse, team officials told him and Mauricio they would consider making them September callups if they reached those and other similar benchmarks.

That is how Alvarez, Baty and Mauricio all found their names in the same big league lineup against the Mariners, batting seventh through ninth and contributing to a win. How they fit going forward remains an open question, but for now, Baty will play third most games and Mauricio will spend the bulk of his time at second, while Vientos will fill in at DH and elsewhere.

The quartet figures to join Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil as core pieces of New York’s 2024 offense.

September will offer a much-awaited preview. When Triple-A manager Dick Scott delivered the news of Mauricio’s promotion late Wednesday night, he gathered the team and told them that Baty and José Butto -- two rookies who had previously been in the Majors last September and earlier this season -- were heading to New York as September callups.

Pausing for dramatic effect, Scott finally added that Mauricio would join them. The room burst into cheers and applause.

“Initially, it does [give you a jolt] a little bit, because you kind of live through them,” Showalter said a day later.

Two nights later, Mauricio was grinning again, showing off the ball from his first Major League hit. With his mother, girlfriend, son and about two dozen others in attendance, Mauricio took a moment midway through the game to gaze around Citi Field and burn the image into his memory.

“I said, ‘Wow, is this a dream or is this real life?’” Mauricio said. “Once it set in, it just kind of validated all that hard work that we all put in to try to get here to this point.”