Corey Oswalt made his second start of the season for the New York Mets on Wednesday night, taking a no-decision in their 6-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre last night to close out their two-game series north of the border.

The 24-year-old right-hander came into the evening with a 9.82 earned-run average over 7.1 innings pitched. Four-and-two-thirds of those innings came in long relief in a 9-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on April 25 (two hits, two earned runs, four strikeouts).

Last week Oswalt made his first start of his young MLB career, getting hit hard for six earned runs on six hits over 2.2 innings. He was much more effective in his second start.

He retired the Blue Jays in order in the top of the first, inducing groundouts from Curtis Granderson and Teoscar Hernandez before getting Yangervis Solarte to pop out to Todd Frazier.

After getting Justin Smoak to line out to lead off the second, Kendrys Morales hit a moonshot to right to give the Jays a 1-0 head start. Russell Martin singled in the next at-bat, but Oswalt set down Randal Grichuk and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to leave him stranded.

He worked around another baserunner in the third (Hernandez two-out single) to keep Toronto at bay but ran into some trouble in the fourth.

He struck out Smoak on a nifty changeup to start the frame, then Morales smoked a ball to left for a double. He issued a bases-on-balls to Martin, then struck out Grichuk on another off-speed pitch (83 MPH curveball), but Gurriel lined an RBI single to center to give the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead.

The Mets put a five-spot up in the top of the fifth to take a 6-2 lead, but Oswalt was replaced by Seth Lugo to start the bottom half of the inning, leaving Oswalt with a likely disappointing but an encouraging no-decision.

His final line was four innings pitched, five hits, two earned runs, two strikeouts, and a walk, lowering his earned-run average to 7.94 for the season. He threw 65 pitches, 42 of them for strikes, and left four Jays runners stranded.

After the game, Oswalt was encouraged by the performance, “It’s not where I want to be, obviously. But it was a good step forward.”

Oswalt certainly showed some grit by navigating his way around a few hazardous situations.

Considering this is only his third MLB appearance, and Morales was the only hitter to get good, clean, and incredibly hard contact against him, it was a building block for the neophyte, no doubt.