Jacob deGrom came back from the dead on Monday, defeating the Chicago Cubs 6-1 on a hot and humid night at Citi Field.
After getting pummeled in his past consecutive starts, deGrom vindicated himself in the most valiant way by pitching a complete game, the second of his major league career.
DeGrom (5-3) held the struggling reigning World Series champs to a single run on five hits. He walked four, while striking out six.
His counterpart John Lackey (4-7) fell to 0-4 in his last five starts, having no luck keeping the ball in the park – serving up 19 home runs this season, one shy of the most in the majors.
The Mets, riding a season high four-game winning streak, are suddenly showing signs of renewed life with their starting rotation.
Within their last five games the bullpen boned an effective Matt Harvey but another strong outing by Robert Gsellman coupled with the triumphant return of Steven Matz and Seth Lugo, there is a ray of hope that this injury-riddled ball club can recover from all the damage that’s been done.
Monday night the Mets defense did their due diligence by converting four double plays after shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera’s 11th error of the season.
Jason Heyward led off the second with a routine popup in which Cabrera collided with Jose Reyes as they both camped under it – the ball glancing off Cabrera’s glove and falling to the ground.
But Cabrera made up for it in the bottom frame by launching a drive over the right center field fence for a 1-0 lead.
Then in the fourth, after Jay Bruce (3-3) added a two-run shot in the third, Cabrera struck again for his sixth home run of the year and sixth multi-home run game of his career.
On Tuesday, Zack Wheeler will give it a whirl for NY’s fifth win in a row when he faces John Lester and his 0-3 record away from Wrigley Field.
Thoughts from Rob Piersall…
Last night was one of those games that you feel proud calling yourself a Mets fan.
DeGrom showed shades of his classic form, the balls were flying out of the yard and everything broke right. It felt like 2015 all over again.
While the Mets have been in such turmoil for a majority of the season, there is finally a glimmer of hope and a sense that things could realistically come together, even it will be an uphill battle.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a perfect Mets victory as Yoenis Cespedes departed with a sore left heel in the sixth inning, and as a fan, that’s all you can hope that it is.
The starting pitching is finally starting to come to fruition as we are getting strong performances from the aforementioned deGrom and Matz, as well as Gsellman and Lugo who were so instrumental in getting the Mets back to the postseason in 2016.
Our offense has been great, no question about it, but our pitching needs to step up, and recently they have done just that.
