So if you’re going go ahead and DFA Jerad Eickoff anyway, you may as well issue the same No. 43 to the rookie callup to take his place but the Mets are too busy do that kind of stuff anymore. Get a number in spring, it’s yours to keep all summer, which is why long-simmering righty starter prospect Thomas Szapucki is up and wearing 63.
Sixty-three is a number for longshot midseason minor league callups whom you hope to get a few innings out of when the team is banged up or there’s a spate of rain make-ups ahead, and not a real player. Our last 63 was Tim (not David) Peterson, who’s now in the minors with the Angels. Our first was Chris Schwinden, whom I recall getting reliably beaten up every time he went out there. Gabriel Ynoa, who did a have a few years with the Orioles ahead, was the second.
The lucky ones, it seems, are those who come from so far below the surface they didn’t get any attention, like Tylor Megill, who as you know by now wears No. 38, chews gum while he throws, is like, 9 feet tall and might be the best 4-inning starter in club history, if he keeps it up. Megill actually has quietly succeeded his way up the ladder, and is the second member of his family to debut in the bigs this year. His older brother Trevor, who’s also very tall, wears No. 74 for the Cubs.
Megill is the first 38 since Justin Wilson; I still see Tim Leary when I think of 38’s and for whatever reason, Jerrod Riggan.
