Bigger Than the World Series: Carl Edwards Jr.’s New York Mets Citi Field Dream
- Mark Rosenman
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
There’s a certain kind of player you notice when you wander through a spring training clubhouse long enough. Not the guy surrounded by cameras. Not the kid with a Top 100 ranking and a radar gun following him around like paparazzi. I’m talking about the player with miles on the odometer and stories tucked into the seams of his glove. The kind of guy whose résumé reads less like a stat sheet and more like a road atlas.
That’s where you find Carl Edwards Jr. this spring.
You remember him, of course. Once upon a time he was the 28th-rated prospect in all of baseball, the String Bean Slinger with the whippy arm and the kind of strikeout numbers that made scouts reach for their thesauruses. He pitched on the biggest stage imaginable and walked away a World Series champion. Now he’s here in Mets camp, a minor league deal in his back pocket, competing for a job the same way he did when he was a skinny kid out of South Carolina drafted in the 48th round. Baseball has a funny way of bringing a man full circle like that. One minute you’re throwing in October with the whole planet watching, the next you’re back in February trying to earn it all over again, with nothing promised but a chance.
When I asked him what being here meant, his answer didn’t come wrapped in clichés. It came from somewhere deeper. “Honestly, just I think me being here myself, personally, is just knowing that I still can do it. Even though I’ve had a different role than a lot of guys, I feel like I still can go out there and compete. Last year was a year for me to really sit down and think about, do I want to hang up the spikes, or do I still have it? And I actually did pretty good last year, so I felt like keep going because the game will tell you when you’re done.”
That line stuck with me. The game will tell you when you’re done. Baseball has always been brutally honest that way. It doesn’t send a text message. It doesn’t leave a polite voicemail. It just stops giving you outs.
His journey here has been anything but straight. Drafted by Texas. Traded to Chicago. Rings and highs and postseason adrenaline. Then the injuries that sneak in like uninvited relatives. Oblique. Shoulder. The kind of physical setbacks that can mess with a pitcher’s mechanics and a human being’s patience. There were stops in Seattle, Atlanta, Toronto, Washington, San Diego, Anaheim, Mexico, back to Texas, and now Queens by way of Port St. Lucie. If frequent flyer miles counted toward Hall of Fame voting, Edwards would already have a plaque.
I asked how he kept from getting swallowed up by frustration when the road twisted that sharply. He didn’t talk about biomechanics or workload management. He talked about faith. “I just keep faith in God. I grew up in a household full of trusting and believing in God. Like I always tell people, he didn’t bring me this far to leave me. He’ll never leave me nor forsake me. So as long as I keep those words of affirmation and keep that confidence in myself, I know that he will let me know when my time is up.”
You can’t plug that into a spreadsheet. I’ve tried. Excel just gives you a confused error message.
Sure, analytics still hover over everything now. Velocity readings. Spin rates. Colored charts that look like modern art installations. Edwards understands that world, but he doesn’t live inside it. He’s evolving instead of obsessing. “Honestly, I don’t really feel like I changed that much. I think now it’s more about learning new pitches. Working with a two-seam fastball and having my natural fastball that cuts, it makes me more dangerous because now I can control both sides of the plate. I have pitches in every count, so I can go up and in, down and in, straight across. Just still learning.”
That willingness to keep learning at 34 says plenty about why he’s still here. A lot of players reach a point where adjustments feel like insults. Edwards treats them like invitations.
The hitters he faces in live sessions offer reassurance, but he measures himself differently. “I still get the same feedback, but the stuff is always, to me, if it’s going to be there, it’s just being able to go out there and compete every time. So as long as I go out there and compete and trust everything that I’ve been doing, it will take care of itself.”
Compete. Trust. Words that sound simple until you realize how many bus rides and rehab assignments they’ve survived.
His career stat line stretches across eleven major league seasons, nearly 300 appearances, a solid 3.81 ERA, and enough strikeouts to confirm that the arm talent never vanished. But those numbers only hint at the real story. They don’t show the detours or the persistence. They don’t show a pitcher reinventing himself as a starter in Mexico, or finding his way back onto a big league mound yet again. Stats tell you what happened. They rarely tell you why someone refused to stop making it happen.
And then there’s the part that hits you right in the Citi Field bleachers. I asked what it would mean to hear his name announced on Opening Day in Queens. His face lit up in a way you can’t fake. “Oh man, it would be music to my ears. I’d be excited. My dad’s a lifelong Mets fan. I got family in New York, so me being called on opening day, pitching opening day, it ignites something different. It’ll give baseball that much more of a meaning for me.”
I joked whether that would top pitching in the World Series. He didn’t blink.
“Bigger than pitching in the World Series.”
That’s the thing about spring training stories. They aren’t always about exit velocity or bullpen sessions or how many inches a slider moves. Sometimes they’re about a man chasing a feeling. About honoring family. About proving something to himself long after everyone else stopped paying attention.
Carl Edwards Jr. may or may not break camp with the Mets. And let’s be honest, the odds are not in his favor. The competition in that bullpen is real. Arms everywhere. Young power. Proven late-inning guys. Nothing is being handed out except rosin bags and opportunity. Baseball hasn’t told him his ending yet, and it certainly isn’t in the business of granting lifetime achievement awards in February.
But standing there listening to him, you’re reminded that this game isn’t only sustained by phenoms and projections. It survives on stubborn hope. On faith. On men who have every reason to ease quietly into the sunset but instead lace up the spikes again because something inside them still burns.
And when he says that pitching on Opening Day at Citi Field would be bigger to him than when he pitched in the World Series — bigger than the biggest stage root for him ? A lifelong Mets fan for a father. Family in New York. The idea that wearing this uniform, hearing his name in Queens, would mean more than October glory.
Even if it’s just for a few games. Even if it’s just one jog in from the bullpen. In a camp full of radar readings and roster math, you can’t help but pull for a story like that.
Because sometimes the heart of spring isn’t about who throws the hardest. It’s about who still believes the most.
To hear Carl Edwards Jr. tell his story in his own words — about faith, perseverance, reinvention, and why pitching at Citi Field would mean even more to him than his World Series moment — you can watch our full one-on-one interview by clicking here. His journey is best appreciated not just in excerpts, but in the sincerity and conviction with which he shares it.
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