During the 8th inning of last night’s 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, reliever Antonio Bastardo showed some moxie after being greeted by a Corey Seager double to start the inning. With the game knotted at two, Terry Collins has Bastardo intentionally walk the next batter Justin Turner.
Now with two on and no outs, the dangerous Adrian Gonzalez was digging in at the plate, Bastardo induced a perfect double-play grounder to David Wright who fields it and easily gets the out at third instead.
No biggie as the lefty escaped the jam by getting Yasmani Grandal to fly out and Joc Pederson to groundout to snuff out the Dodgers threat.
After a rough Spring and a wobbly start to the season, Bastardo has become a lethal weapon out of the Mets bullpen. He is holding right-handed batters to a .222 average, but left-handed batters have virtually no chance against him, posting just a .135 average and .390 OPS.
Original Report – May 9
New York Mets left-handed reliever, Antonio Bastardo, inherited an impossible situation yesterday as he came in for Addison Reed. Bases loaded, nobody out and the team cloning to a one run lead. Bastardo, handled it with ease.
All it took was 15 pitches for Bastardo to navigate through an absolute landmine of a situation. A strike out of Daniel Norris. An infield fly from Melvin Upton Jr. and then a final punch-out of Alexei Ramirez. He made it look easy, in what was his biggest performance as a Met thus far.
“They were waiting for something else, but we got them with the fastball,” Bastardo said. “I just feel comfortable with my fastball. I don’t even check the velocity or whatever. I just feel a lot of confidence with my fastball.”
Earlier in the season, Bastardo was not getting the vote of confidence from his manager. Terry Collins now though has begun to find a spot in the bullpen for his lefty reliever.
“He kept the ball away and up — tough balls to get on top of,” Collins said. “He’s got real good numbers against a couple of those guys he faced. And it showed again today.”
Bastardo, 30, rewarded his manager well by navigating out of what seemed to be a disastrous situation. He earned himself the Mets championship belt that is given out by the players during each win to the player they felt was the biggest contributor to that victory.
Antonio has put up decent numbers this year. He has appeared in 12 games, while pitching 14.2 innings in that time. He has pitched to a 2.51 ERA, and has put down 20 batters on strikes. Bastardo’s WHIP stands at 1.19. After a shaky start, and a rough spring, he has settled in well and contributing to be a big piece in the bullpen.
