Jacob deGrom took the mound for his first televised start of the spring on Tuesday afternoon in Port St. Lucie during the Mets’ 8-3 win over the Houston Astros. Making his third appearance in Grapefruit League play, the ace looked as good as advertised thus far.

DeGrom dominated the Astros batters for the most part on the afternoon, but gave up some hard hit liners towards the end and was helped out by his defense. Following his outing, deGrom told reporters via Zoom overall he felt good out there and it was nice to just get the work in.

“Towards the end starting leaving the ball up a bit. But we’re here to build up, so I was happy to get four innings out there, I actually went down and threw 15 pitches in the bullpen after to get that pitch count up” he said.

deGrom set the Astros down in order easily in the first inning, striking out both Jose Siri and Michael Brantley swinging with 93 and 94 MPH sliders, respectively. He dialed up another perfect inning in the second, featuring two more strikeouts of Jason Castro and Steven Souza.

The right-hander said he’s always working in-between, but he’s been really happy with how his slider has looked over his past two starts. As pointed out by MMO’s own Mathew Brownstein, deGrom had a 75% whiff-rate on the pitch this afternoon.

With one out in the third, Astros prospect Jeremy Pena took deGrom deep to left (with some help from the wind) for the first run allowed by the Mets’ ace this spring. DeGrom was able to bounce right back into his groove, and struck out Freudis Nova and Jose Siri to end the inning.

After a leadoff infield single, deGrom was then helped out by his defense in the fourth. Brandon Nimmo ranged over into right-center and robbed Alex Bregman of a two-run home run and Kevin Pillar made a nice sliding catch to take a hit away from Yordan Alvarez.

DeGrom reiterated that he felt good early on, but later in the start he started missing his spots a bit. He said, “I felt like I was locating the fastball well early on, and like I said, towards the end started missing up a little.”

On the afternoon, deGrom threw 50 pitches and allowed just the one run on two hits and struck out six. Through three spring starts, the righty has thrown a total of nine innings and allowed one run on three hits and one walk while striking out 16 batters.

During the 2020 pandemic-shortened season, deGrom pitched to a 2.38 ERA, 2.26 FIP, and 0.95 WHIP while striking out a league leading 104 batters over 12 starts. The 32-year old right-hander already appears to be in mid-season form, and looks ready to roll for the regular season.