I caught a good seven innings of the Minor League Mets’ matchup with the Italian National Team. It’s Spring Training for them too, apparently.

There’s not a ton of worthwhile conclusions to draw since the Italian team didn’t seem to pose much of a challenge for the Mets. I lost track of the score; the Italians notched one run off Ryan Fraser thanks to a pair of singles and a wild pitch. The Mets prospects scored many runs on many hits. In one rally — though I am not certain — it appeared some form of mercy rule was invoked.

The Italian pitchers, for the most part, lacked the velocity the Mets’ prospects are likely accustomed to seeing even in the low levels of the Minors. Several worked with fastballs around 80 mph. There were a couple of sidearmers in the bunch, and one guy with a strange, crouched, halting delivery that seemed to try some of the Mets’ timing.

Cory Vaughn went 3-for-3 in the game with a triple, a double and an infield single. Matt den Dekker had a bunch of hits; I lost count of them.

Outside of a bit of wildness from Fraser, all the Mets’ young pitchers looked good. The Italian squad appeared to have trouble catching up with pitches in the 90s, so hard throwers like Jeurys Familia and Robert Carson looked particularly dominant.

The Mets’ pitchers only threw one inning each, and I missed Matt Harvey’s inning (the first). Apparently he struck out two batters and got a groundball out. Adam Wogan, the Mets’ director of Minor League operations, said the goal for all the pitchers was just to throw strikes, and all of them did.

So that’s cool.