As a Mets rookie makes his long-shot MLB debut, the scout who signed him is beating his own odds

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His speech isn’t all the way back. But the excitement in his voice was palpable, practically bursting through the phone.

“Awesome,” Jonah Rosenthal kept saying this week when asked about New York Mets right-hander Justin Hagenman. “Really awesome.”

Rosenthal, 35, is an area scouting supervisor for the Los Angeles Dodgers who suffered a large stroke on Dec. 10. Doctors initially told his wife, Lindsey, that in the best-case scenario, he would never regain mobility on his right side, never speak or understand speech again.

“They didn’t think he would make it through the day,” Lindsey said.

Rosenthal (no relation to a co-writer of this story) continues to defy his doctors’ expectations. And on Wednesday, he experienced the kind of thrill amateur scouts relish like none other. The thrill of watching a player he signed overcome the odds to make his major-league debut.

Hagenman, 28, was the Dodgers’ 23rd-round pick out of Penn State in 2018. His $75,000 signing bonus was a relative pittance compared to what top picks command. But after seven years in the minors, he struck out three of his first four hitters in his first appearance for the Mets and held down 3 1/3 innings as a bulk reliever. The only run charged to him in a 4-3, extra-innings loss to the Minnesota Twins came after he left the game in the fifth inning.

Rosenthal, who joined the Dodgers 10 years ago, also was the scout behind the 2018 selections of first baseman Michael Busch, now with the Chicago Cubs, and right-hander Michael Grove, who is inactive for the Dodgers this season after undergoing shoulder surgery. Left-hander Garrett McDaniels, currently with the Los Angeles Angels as a Rule 5 draft pick, is another of Rosenthal’s major leaguers, a non-drafted free agent the scout signed out of Coastal Carolina for $20,000 in 2022.

In the case of Busch, Rosenthal downplayed his own role, saying, “It’s a top prospect. First rounder. OK, it’s cool.” Hagenman, on the other hand, was picked in a round that no longer exists. Major League Baseball and the Players Association in 2021 reduced the draft to 20 rounds. It was 40 rounds from 2012 to ’19.

Talking about Hagenman, Rosenthal kept coming back to the word “ingenuity,” citing the way the pitcher lowered his arm slot and developed different shapes on his breaking ball. Hagenman, who signed with the Mets as a free agent in November, said he still talks with Rosenthal a couple of times a year.

“He texted me last night,” Hagenman said. “I love Jonah. He’s stayed in touch the whole time. I obviously wouldn’t be here without him signing me.

“Obviously when you’re not a top-round guy, not everybody sees you as a potential major leaguer. The fact that he saw that early, that he saw me as someone with value, means a lot.”

Congrats to Justin Hagenman for recording his first career strikeout! pic.twitter.com/6nBeLcmEvA

— New York Mets (@Mets) April 16, 2025

Rosenthal’s stroke occurred at 4 a.m., inside his home in Raleigh, N.C. He woke up by falling out of bed. He struggled to respond to Lindsey. He had suffered a dissection in the carotid artery running down the left side of his neck.

As described by Johns Hopkins Medicine, “a dissection is a tear in the inner layer of the wall of an artery. The tear lets blood get in between the layers of the wall and separate them. This causes the artery wall to bulge, and the bulge can slow or stop blood flow through the artery.”

No one knows why the dissection happened to Jonah. Perhaps, the Rosenthals were told, it was the lasting effect of an old sports injury. Perhaps a cough Jonah and Lindsey caught from their 2-year-old daughter, Harper, triggered an issue in his neck.

“We’ll never have the definitive answer,” Lindsey said.

Jonah’s artery, Lindsey said, fully closed. His stroke occurred after a piece of plaque broke off and went to his brain, Lindsey said. The dissection prevented doctors at the Raleigh campus of WakeMed Hospital from accessing his brain during surgery or inserting a stent to open the artery. Jonah was intubated and sedated for five days in intensive care, the goal to minimize his swelling.

“The stroke just had to run its course,” Lindsey said.

As soon as Jonah awakened from sedation, he began occupational, physical and speech therapy. He received a day pass from the hospital to go home on Christmas Day. On Jan. 7, nearly one month after his stroke, he was discharged for good.

Recently, Jonah passed the four-month mark. The dexterity in the right side of his body has returned. A droop that occasionally surfaced on the right side of his face is gone. His speech, Lindsey said, is progressing “wonderfully.”

But Jonah remains in a critical stage.

“Every stroke is different. They can only give us very loose guidelines. The first six months are the most critical,” Lindsey said.

“What is regained in the first six months pretty much determines what the outlook will be for the rest of his life. You can gain some more up to a year. But at the one-year mark, that’s really where you’re going to be.”

Lindsey recalls her initial conversation with doctors — the one in which she was told that, best case, Jonah would never move his right side or speak or understand speech again — as the hardest of her life.

“He has vastly exceeded those expectations,” she said. “At this point, he’s really writing his own future.”

For Jonah, the future can’t wait. His occupational therapists cleared him to resume driving, and he is taking trips of 30 minutes or less. To Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State. To the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, N.C. So far, he said he has attended about 10 games.

“I want to be with scouts. I really want to talk to scouts,” he said.

The Dodgers, the Rosenthals said, have been fully supportive. “Oh my God, down the line,” Jonah said, rattling off the names of executives who contacted him: president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, general manager Brandon Gomes, vice president of baseball operations Billy Gasparino, director of amateur scouting Zach Fitzpatrick.

Gasparino said the efforts of Friedman and team president Stan Kasten were “fantastic.”

“We have guaranteed his salary and medical bills for the year,” Gasparino said. “We have filled in with internal scouts to take care of all his scouting duties for the year.  Now we are slowly trying to get him out to games as his comfort level allows. We are hoping he can work for us again. Either way, I would bet we take care of him no matter what.”

The support for the Rosenthals extends far beyond the Dodgers. The scouting community is tight-knit. A GoFundMe for the family has raised more than $100,000. Jonah, who previously worked as an intern for the Philadelphia Phillies, Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees, said people from all 30 clubs have been in touch.

Then came Wednesday, and the pure elation Rosenthal experienced with Hagenman’s debut.

Hagenman rose to Triple A with the Dodgers, but before the 2023 trade deadline was sent to the Boston Red Sox as part of a package for super-utility man Kiké Hernández. He became a minor-league free agent at the end of last season when the Red Sox did not include him on their 40-man roster. The Mets signed him to a major-league contract on Nov. 18 that pays him a prorated $850,000 while he is on their roster.

Rosenthal could not stop gushing over the way Hagenman persevered through his journey, team by team, year by year. Hagenman, in turn, smiled widely Wednesday upon learning that his promotion provided Rosenthal with some joy.

“Nothing but the best for him,” Hagenman said. “He saw something in me that let me get drafted and get into professional baseball. Just the fact that I could prove him right is huge.”

The survivor of a stroke who was never supposed to speak again used the same word to describe Hagenman’s performance that he did to celebrate his ascent.

It’s a word, of course, that also applies to his own recovery.

“Awesome.”

(Photo of Hagenman: Matt Krohn / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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