On Tuesday, the New York Mets were able to clinch a winning series for the first time since May 19 with a 6-3 win over the Washington Nationals. The offense was able to have five runs by the end of the fifth, but that was all the runs that left-hander David Peterson needed as he picked up his first win of the year in his second start of 2024.

Peterson went 6.2 innings, allowed two runs on five hits, walked two, and struck out two on 81 pitches (52 strikes) in the win. The key for him was to get the Nationals hitters to hit the ball on the ground and they did just that with ten groundball outs. Plus, he kept his pitch count low by throwing 17 first-pitch strikes to the 28 batters he faced.

These kind of strong starts are not new for Peterson if you go back to how he finished the 2023 season. Over his last six starts, he has allowed three runs or fewer in five of them and has gone into the sixth inning or later in five of his last eight starts.

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In just his second start back, Peterson was able to get nine swings and misses with six of those whiffs coming from his slider (Baseball Savant). With the slider working, his sinker did not produce much hard-hit contact as well with an average exit velocity of around 78 miles-per-hour.

The Nationals went into the game looking to swing and swing early. In this game, the Nats put the first pitch in play seven times. If it wasn’t the first pitch, a good portion of the at-bats would end in the first three pitches. Peterson told the media after the game that he knew how this lineup might approach him and he tried to play into that.

“It kind of tells you their plan. I think I kind of knew that going in, they like to swing the bat and put the ball in play…With having a six-pitch first inning, it was kind of laid out how the game was going to go. Just try to play into that, get quick outs, get ground balls early, keep the pitch count down, and get the hitters back in the dugout because they were feeling it tonight.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Peterson pitched well against Washington. In 10 career outings against the Nationals (7 starts), he is 4-1 with a 3.53 ERA despite having just 29 strikeouts (fewest against any NL East opponent). At Nationals Park, he is 2-1 in four starts (3.86 ERA).

Peterson’s success now that he is fully healthy from the torn labrum injury could go a long way to making him a mainstay in the rotation as the team looks for pitchers that can give them deep outings to try to spare what has been an overworked bullpen in the first two months of the year.