Jose Butto showing he can be a significant piece of Mets' pitching future

Coming up through the minors, Jose Butto never got much love on the various prospect lists, but maybe it’s time to say that he could be a significant piece of the Mets’ pitching future.

All he does, when given opportunities, is go out and look the part of a blue-chipper. 

Never more so than Sunday at Citi Field, when Butto racked up a career-high nine strikeouts while pitching six scoreless innings in the Mets’ 2-1 win over the Kansas City Royals. 

It was Butto’s second fill-in start of the season, after losing out on the fifth starter’s spot to the now-injured Tylor Megill, and he’s now allowed only five hits and one run in 12 innings this season. 

No wonder manager Carlos Mendoza left no doubt that the right-hander will stay in the rotation for the foreseeable future, at least while Kodai Senga is on the shelf. 

“He’s not going anywhere,” Mendoza said with a smile. “He can pitch. He attacked hitters today, but when he got behind in counts, he as able to pitch backwards. He found pitches to get back into counts. I told him, ‘what a great outing.’ ” 

It wasn’t just the Mets who are loving what they’re seeing. I checked in with a scout who was at Sunday’s game and he said Butto has been overlooked, even by the Mets. 

“He was very good today,” the scout texted. “I think the Mets are finally waking up to what they may have. He’s a solid back-end starter with three solid pitches. He got some swings and misses on his bottom of the strike zone changeup today.”

The scout said he thinks Butto has been overlooked “because he’s not overpowering,” while noting that he pitches with poise and smarts.

It’s not as if Butto is a soft-tosser. He hit 95 mph on the radar gun with his four-seam fastball a handful of times on Sunday, while throwing mostly in the 93-94 mph range. That’s about major league average these days, but as the scout noted, “his fastball plays up at times with his good changeup.”

The first inning on Sunday was proof of that as Butto struck out the side, getting to two strikes against Maikel Garcia, Bobby Witt Jr., and Vinnie Pasquantino with his fastball before putting each of them away with the changeup. 

In addition, Butto also mixes in a slider/cutter hat had good bite on Sunday, giving plenty of ammunition when combined with his feel for keeping hitters off balance.

This isn’t a two-start rush to judgment, either. Butto pitched very well when the Mets needed a starter last September, with a 3.29 ERA over five starts while averaging more than a strikeout per inning. So now he has a 2.50 ERA over his last seven starts in the big leagues, going back to last season, with 43 strikeouts in 39.1 innings. 

And it’s worth noting the Royals were a hot team offensively coming into this series, having won seven straight games while scoring runs in bunches, and they scored 11 runs on Saturday against Sean Manaea and Mets relievers.

As such, it’s significant that Luis Severino and the Mets also held the Royals to just one run on Friday night, while taking two of three games to win the series, as their pitching overall continues to be better than expected.

In fact, they rank second in the National League with a team ERA of 3.51, and it looks as if they’ve assembled a deep bullpen. Their relievers have a 3.34 ERA, which also ranks second in the NL.

In the end, maybe they were fortunate to win on Sunday, as they benefited from four walks in the eighth inning as well as a bases-loaded dribbler by Harrison Bader. Or it could be, as both Mendoza and Bader said, that these Mets are building something by the way they’ve either fought back in games or won some close ones.

“We have to create our own luck in the game,” was the way Bader put it, and then noted that he believes “we’re riding the wave” from their series in Atlanta.

Mendoza agreed, saying, “We’ve shown the fight, the ability to get back into games. We did that in Atlanta. We’re going to play close games. For us to come through in games like this is important to us.”

It’s too early to know how significant any of it is, but it’s sure looking like that 0-5 start to the season was a bit fluky, as the Mets are 7-3 since then.

They still very much need J.D. Martinez in a lineup that couldn’t cash in on a few golden opportunities on Sunday, but the pitching is giving them a chance to win almost every day and that could go a long way toward getting into the wild card mix.

If that proves to be the case, more and more it appears Butto could play a bigger role than expected.