The end of the rainy weather and the start of a heat wave hit the East Coast last week, and it affected quite a few games up and down the Nationals Minor League System. It was another good showing this past week for the starting pitchers and position players like Robert Hassell III. As the big league club continues to sink lower, more attention will be put back on the minor leagues and on this edition of theFUTURE we are here to cover it all for you.

Harrisburg Senators starting pitcher Tyler Stuart has had an up-and-down season so far, but he’s trying to get back on track and get back to where he left off last season. In this edition of “Player Journey,” we will highlight the career of Tyler Stuart to this point.

Tyler Stuart was taken in the sixth round, 179th overall, by the New York Mets in the 2022 MLB First-Year Player Draft out of the University of Southern Mississippi. In his final year of college, he went 4-0 with a 3.38 ERA over 40 innings of work. Scouts saw the 6-foot-9-inch frame and three-quarters arm slot as intimidating for many batters and felt that he could become either a starter or reliever one day. After the draft, Stuart was assigned to Low-A St. Lucie. In a small sample size of only two and two-thirds innings. Stuart had a rough 13.50 ERA.

In 2023, Stuart would start what felt like his first full pro season. In 75 and two-thirds innings with High-A Brooklyn, Stuart had a 1.55 ERA with 84 strikeouts. Baseball America awarded him with High-A All-Star honors. After that terrific start to the 2023 campaign, the New York Mets front office would award him with a promotion to Double-A Binghamton. Stuart would struggle slightly in 35 innings pitched; he had a 3.60 ERA with 28 strikeouts, though he did keep his walk numbers down at both levels with only a 7% walk rate, one of the lowest in his career.

2024 would be an important year for Stuart to build upon his prior success and keep moving up the Mets system, but yet again, Stuart was just average at Double-A with a 3.96 ERA over 84 innings pitched and an impressive 90 strikeouts. On July 28, 2024, Jesse Winker was traded from the Washington Nationals to the New York Mets for Tyler Stuart in a one-for-one trade. Stuart would be sent to the Nationals Double-A affiliate in Harrisburg, where he would dominate in 21 and two-thirds innings with a 2.08 ERA and 32 strikeouts. The Nationals would then promote him to Triple-A, where things then fell apart again, the walk rate skyrocketed, and his ERA rose, but at the end of the day, it was a good season from a development standpoint for Stuart. Next spring would be Stuart’s time to shine.

In 2025, Stuart got off to a rough start by getting placed on the injured list for the first time in his career. The injury had to do with his elbow and was initially thought to be minor at first, but soon became a longer-than-expected delay to his season, which moved his debut to May 7 with the Florida Complex League team on rehab. Since that start, he’s made stops in Wilmington and Harrisburg. He was activated off the IL on June 3 and was optioned to stay in Harrisburg. So far in 18 innings this season, Stuart has struggled, but the potential is still there, even if it’s a relief pitcher one day, the Nats hope to see Stuart recover from his injury while also controlling his walks in the future and they see him as a piece of this rebuild for years to come.