Zac Thornton allowed seven home runs in his first 11 big-league starts. The San Francisco Giants took the rookie deep four times in start No. 12.
“Obviously the home runs are not what he’s looking for there … it’s a day where the wind is blowing out,” interim manager Andy Green said Saturday after the 9-5 loss in front of 30,046 at Citi Field.
Thronton (3-5) saw his ERA jump from 2.93 to 3.53 after he gave up a career-high six earned runs on seven hits over five innings. He struck out six, walked one, and threw 59 of 82 pitches for strikes.
The New York Mets (64-78) were trailing 3-2 with two outs in the top of the fifth with nobody on base when the Giants put together four straight hits, including homers by Christian Koss and Rafael Devers, who each homered off of Thornton earlier in the game.
“In one sense, he’s two outs in the fifth inning with three runs given up, mostly from like Rafael Devers taking a good swing (on a first-inning homer),” Green said. “He was one pitch away from getting out of that inning and then there’s two home runs and a single in between, so not what he wanted. Not the outing that I think we saw before, just some kind of middle-of-the-plate misses that got hit.”
Thornton has thrown 129 innings combined between the majors and minors this year, which is 56 1/3 more innings than he pitched last season when he missed the second half with an oblique injury. Green was asked before the game if the larger workload was a concern for the 24-year-old.
“Where we’re at right now, he looks and has been very strong,” Green said. “We feel good about where he is.
“Certainly hope that continues through the end of the year. As long as he continues to not give us any pause on anything we’ll continue to run him out there. And like Christian (Scott) I think most all of his starts going forward are more than four days’ rest, which I think makes sense given where he’s coming from.”
