Despite taking the loss in the Mets’ road opener against the San Diego Padres, Jacob deGrom managed to continue his success from last week’s outing with a seven-inning, seven-strikeout performance. He allowed only two runs on four hits and one walk, hurling 103 pitches (72 for strikes) in the 4-0 loss. He moves to 2-4 on the season, and remains winless since April 3.
Lumped in with his seven shutout frames versus Cincinnati last Wednesday, deGrom has managed to shed a run and a quarter off his ERA – which now stands at 3.60. Even with the end result, the ace certainly looked stronger this time around, hitting 99 mph with his fastball while sitting in the range of eight to 17 pitches per inning through his first six.
DeGrom seemed to run out of gas in the bottom half of the seventh, falling to a 94-95 mph range on his fastball as a pair of one-out hits from Eric Hosmer and Hunter Renfroe – the latter a double into the left-center field gap – set up a Ty France sacrifice fly to provide the Friars a timely insurance run. Wil Myers walked to steal a 12-pitch turn at the plate, and Austin Hedges added another bit of drama with a full count lineout to left field, wrapping up a frustrating 29-pitch inning.
All told, the resilience on deGrom’s end was not the only familiar sight, as he commanded his fastball and garnered confidence in his offspeeds through the prior six frames to overpower a Padre offense that had scored the seventh-most runs in baseball across the last week.
The righty kicked things off with a three-up, three-down first, fanning Manny Machado with a slider away to retire the side. He set down the next six hitters in order, though on a handful of sharp grounders and conveniently-nabbed liners.
With the order turning in the fourth and Greg Garcia leading things off with a base hit into right, deGrom faced his first challenge of the evening, and he couldn’t have responded better. DeGrom struck out Franmil Reyes with a fastball up and in to follow a trio of sliders, and then again Machado with another slider off the plate. The next batter, Hosmer, splintered his bat on a devilish 0-1 slider inside for a quick 3-1 putout.
A hanging slider to Renfroe that landed a few rows back in the left field seats accounted for the game’s first run in the bottom of the fifth, but deGrom got right back to business. He struck out France on four pitches – again winning on a slider down and out – before inducing a two-pitch groundout from Myers and then embarrassing Hedges with a three-pitch punchout (the last pitch was, in fact, a slider chased beyond the strike zone).
The sixth inning would take a little longer – 15 pitches and just eight strikes rather than 11 and 10, respectively, from the prior frame – though nothing else changed. Opposing pitcher Chris Paddack bounced out to first on three pitches before Garcia struck out – this time on a fastball called on the black. Reyes finally managed to put a ball in play, albeit topping a slider some five or six feet in front of home plate for a 2-3 putout.
The real frustration with last night’s loss, as the song has gone every night across the past week, continues to be the Mets’ inability to score runs in support of their starters. DeGrom’s case seems to stick out – especially in its parallels to the same ineptitude that surrounded him through 2018. The righty has not seen a run of support in 15 innings, and with the continued offensive struggles of Brandon Nimmo, Robinson Cano, Wilson Ramos, and Todd Frazier (among several others), there’s no help on the way.
Asked if the issues have come to bother him at all, deGrom told reporters “not really… My goal is to go out there and put up zeros and give these guys a chance to win… I made a couple mistakes tonight and they capitalized on it.”
“We’ll be all right. Can’t win ’em all,” he added. “[It’s a] long season.”
