With everything on the line tonight at Dodger Stadium, Jacob deGrom is not worried about the pressure. He’s focused on delivering a great start and is trying to approach it one pitch at a time.
“I just try to block everything out once I get on the field,” the right-hander explained. “The nerves go away, and it’s the same game we’ve been playing all year. I’m able to think about that and just try to take it one pitch at a time and make the best pitch I can at that time.”
“If I do give up a hit or something, so what?” deGrom continued. “I’ve still got to go out there and compete.”
In game one of the series against Clayton Kershaw, deGrom fired seven shutout innings while striking out a total of 13 batters. This dominating performance already cemented his status among the elite, but he can take it to a whole new level with a win tonight facing Zack Greinke.
As John Harper writes in the NY Daily News, deGrom’s postseason will go down as one of the greatest feats in playoff history if he can beat two Cy Young Award winners like Kershaw and Greinke in back to back starts.
While Greinke has been amazing this season with an incredible 1.66 ERA, even the Dodgers know they will be in for a tough challenge.
“It’s probably dead even, to be honest,” Kershaw said. “As good as Zack is and has been the whole year, deGrom has been the same.”
“There’s really no home-field advantage when you’re facing a guy like deGrom. We saw that in Game 1. He’s just very impressive, very tough to square up. If you can get strikeouts on heaters like he can, it’s really tough.”
It’s really amazing to think about how far deGrom has climbed in such a short amount of time. Harper points out in his article that just two years ago he was an obscure minor league pitcher, and now he’s starting in the biggest game for the franchise in nine years.
Everyone just assumed that pitchers like Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard or Zack Wheeler would be the ones the Mets would rely on in this type of game. They were part of the plan, they were highly rated prospects and they received all of the attention.
However, it’s deGrom who they are counting on to keep the season alive, and he is the pitcher who has emerged as the ace of the staff.
