by This is an important year for Colin Houck.
Entering his third full season of professional baseball, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride for the former first-round pick.
Houck spent all of 2024 at Single-A, and then returned there for his first 62 games in 2025. He fared better his second time around and earned a promotion to High-A Brooklyn for the back half of the season. In 54 games as a Cyclone, Houck hit .198/.269/.289/.558.
“I think he struggled a little bit at the beginning,” Cyclones manager Eduardo Núñez said. “I think it’s kind of like, all those guys, they jump from Low-A to High-A, it’s kind of like, the pitching’s different. Better pitching, they can throw breaking balls when they’re behind the count, which you don’t see that so often in lower levels. … He finished pretty well, so we’re expecting him to have a good season this year.”
The biggest issue for Houck throughout his career has been strikeouts. He struck out 36.3% of the time in his first full season in 2024, and while he improved in Single-A to 28.7% in 2025 — still a high mark — it jumped up again to 36.8% after his promotion to High-A.
Houck had some moments with Brooklyn in 2025, most notably a two-run home run in Game 1 Game 1 of the South Atlantic League North Championship Series. It was a big home run that helped propel the Cyclones to their first of what would be four straight playoff wins en route to the championship.
But largely, he struggled.
The struggles were immense when he first got promoted. In his first 23 games in Brooklyn, Houck hit .138 with a .402 OPS. Over his final 31, it jumped to a .243 batting average and .672 OPS. It was an improvement, but not a huge one.
“It really wasn’t anything more than myself,” Houck said. “I got up here, and I felt like I needed to do more, instead of just doing what I was doing in St. Lucie, which would have been fine. That was really me getting in my own way and complicating myself and getting in my head.”
Once he figured that out, Houck said, his offensive numbers started coming around.
Houck was the 32nd player selected in the 2023 MLB Draft out of Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia.
He was the first player selected by the Mets and received a $2,750,000 signing bonus, the largest the organization handed out that class.
“You got a big signing bonus, people are expecting you to play well,” Núñez said. “But that’s out of his control. He just needs to go out there and try to play good baseball. He’s gonna have good days, bad days. But yeah, of course, it’s hard to get a big signing bonus; everybody’s going to be watching you. But as I said, it’s just part of the business.”
Now, returning to Brooklyn for another season, it’s going to be a big year for him to establish where he stands in the Mets organization.
“I was blessed to be picked where I was, and I guess it does come with some added pressure, but at the end of the day, I just want to come out and have fun,” Houck said. “That’s the biggest thing for me.”
