In 2014, the New York Mets traded Ike Davis to the Pittsburgh Pirates for two minor leaguers who seeped deep into my baseball subconscious, each of them laying low down there for a very long time. One of them was named Blake Taylor, a pitcher who rose slowly from rookie ball in the Gulf Coast League until he made it to Syracuse. Syracuse is the giveaway that Blake Taylor’s rise was slow, because the Mets didn’t replant their Triple-A flag in the Eastern half of the United States until 2019. Taylor pitched for Las Vegas the year before that, when the Mets’ maintained a more transcontinental relationship with minor league geography. Blake had worked his way up the Met chain in classic fashion, stopping at Kingsport, Brooklyn, Columbia, St. Lucie, and Binghamton before plateauing near the top of the ladder. At the end of his Met journey, he was assigned to the Scottsdale Scorpions of the Arizona Fall League, where he pitched on the same staff as current Met David Peterson. Peterson selected by the Mets in the first round of the 2017 MLB draft, nine years after the Mets selected Ike Davis in the first round of the 2008 MLB draft. If nothing else, Blake Taylor was a bridge between eras.
On December 5, 2019, the Mets traded for veteran outfielder Jake Marisnick, sending the Houston Astros two minor leaguers, one of them Blake Taylor. “Blake Taylor, guy we got for Ike Davis? He’s still around?” Indeed he was. Soon enough, Taylor would do what Ike had done in 2010, earning a promotion to the majors. It took Taylor longer, but the destination was the same, whatever the city. Blake pitched three seasons for Houston, 2020 to 2022, making it into postseason action in his first two years. I watched the 2021 World Series and saw Blake Taylor strike out Freddie Freeman to end an inning. “Hey, it’s that guy again. The Ike guy. Ike Davis was out of baseball for four years by then.
The other minor leaguer the Mets received from the Pirates in 2014 for Ike Davis was named Zack Thornton. Not paying attention to our farm system that closely, it’s quite possible I blurred Blake Taylor and Zack Thornton into one prospect who never pitched for the Mets but sure hung in there. Maybe they became Zack Taylor, not to be confused with Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor or twelfth president of the United States Zachary Taylor. Neither of those namealikes ever pitched for the Mets, either. If one half of the Ike Davis haul took his sweet time ascending, maybe the other was still at it. That is if there had been two; I couldn’t remember for certain. Thus, when I began to read the name “Zach Thornton” as a Mets comer, I thought once more, “The Ike Davis guy? Wait, didn’t he already make it? Well, if he didn’t, good for him progressing at last.”
When word went out that Zach Thornton was about to be called up to take a start in Washington on Wednesday, I had to check. Nope, Zach Thornton is not Zack Thornton, just as Carlos Mendoza the September 1997 Met outfielder didn’t materialize again at a November 2023 press conference to be introduced as new Mets manager Carlos Mendoza. In that case, the spellings were the same, but I already knew they were different Carloses, with Mendoza the manager too young to have been Mendoza the player.
For the record, Zack Thornton, who celebrated his 38th birthday this week, never advanced beyond Las Vegas in the Mets’ system. He last pitched as a 51 in 2016. The next year, he was a Southern Maryland Blue Crab in the Atlantic League. Those 2017 Blue Crabs also gave shots to former Mets Robert Carson, Danny Muno, Robert Carson, and Pat Misch. In between his Las Vegas and Southern Maryland stints, Zack Thornton threw a few innings in the WBC for Team Israel, the Mensch on a Bench squad that made more noise than expected before bowing out of the tournament in the second round. One of Zack Thornton’s teammates that March? Ike Davis, who drove in three runs, batted .471, and conjured memories of a promising future past.
Zach Thornton, 24 years old, arrived in D.C. to bring the future back to its rightful place, the here and now. He’s on the same roster as 2026 freshmen Carson Benge, A.J. Ewing, No. 55 in your program Nick Morabito, and at least two other starting pitchers in the early stages of their MLB journey, Nolan McLean (technically still a rookie) and Christian Scott (technically no longer a rookie, but still getting his feet and arm wet). Jonah Tong might be back soon as well. The Mets who loaded up on veterans you’d heard of from other places during the winter are leaning increasingly on kids you were waiting to find out more about. The learning process, ours and theirs, is underway.
That’s why when the Mets of the rookie outfielders and the pitcher making his debut — along with their more experienced teammates — fall as they did on Wednesday night, 8-4, to Zack (!) Littell and the Nationals, the disgust level is surprisingly minimal. Aside from Juan Soto belting two homers, it wasn’t a good game for the Mets, and it was no more than an adequate start from Thornton. Zach with an H went four-and-a-third, which doesn’t necessarily tell an observer anything these days. Eighty pitches indicates a little less efficiency than desired. But the trajectory was encouraging. Thornton’s first inning left him behind, 3-0, after a soft single, a walk, and a CJ Abrams blast threatened to bury the kid alive. The second went better, with only one run allowed. The third and fourth saw Zach get comfortable and the Nats go down in order twice. All told, four earned runs on four hits and two bases on balls (the latter keeping us from going with Thornton Wilder as our headline). He struck out three, so it can’t be said he’s Zach without a K. Best of all for the young lefty, his family was in attendance, which is always a heartwarming sidebar, but this one was extra special, given the serious health issues his dad has been negotiating. Soon, Paul Thornton will be up on his feet again, and we will hope Zach Thornton might bring us to ours in appreciation for the type of outing we instinctively rise to applaud.
Mets management was impatient enough with its own dreadful start to promote several of its most promising youngsters. In return, granting a team slipping further from .500 and glued stubbornly to the bottom of its division a little grace in those games when they don’t immediately make strides onward and upward seems a fair deal. Patience isn’t always rewarded. Sometimes it’s called for.
“When you’re safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.”
This Wilder quote is not baseball-related, and yet…
Wilder also once remarked that he would “love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.”
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“…can’t be said he’s Zach without a K”
Priceless. But in a perfect world, there would be 2 Zachs/Zacks on the Mets’ pitching staff.