Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports
On Wednesday, the New York Mets turned to starting pitcher Max Scherzer in the second game of a three-game set against the Atlanta Braves. After suffering a dramatic loss in Tuesday’s game, the Mets needed Scherzer to give them a boost to even up the series. However, Scherzer fell flat of those expectations in an underwhelming effort that was accompanied by mixed results.
The first few innings were smooth sailing for Scherzer. In fact, he only allowed two hits in the first three innings while punching out seven batters. Despite allowing a string of singles in the fourth inning that generated a run for the Braves, Scherzer was able to strike out Michael Harris II on a foul tip to limit the damage.
“I did a lot of things right: Didn’t walk anybody, lot of first-pitch strikes, used all my pitches, everything was working,” Scherzer said after the game.
Clearly, strikeouts were not the problem for Scherzer in this game, as he produced 19 swings and misses, according to Baseball Savant. To put this number into perspective, Braves’ pitcher Charlie Morton allowed 13 in comparison. Seven of Scherzer’s swings and misses were generated on his fastball, which he threw 49 times out of his 103 pitches. This high usage of his fastball worked well for him in his previous start against the Phillies, where he pitched seven innings of one-run ball while throwing 49 fastballs out of 101 pitches.
Scherzer’s failure came in the latter portion of his outing. After retiring the first two batters he faced in the bottom of the fifth inning, Austin Riley and Sean Murphy combined for a bloop and a blast that cut the Braves’ deficit to one run. In a similar fashion, Scherzer retired the first two batters he faced in the bottom of the sixth inning and then experienced trouble trying to close it out. He allowed three consecutive hits, which provided the Braves with two runs to take a one-run lead over the Mets.
Despite his success early in the game, he failed to convert on those last few pitches when he was becoming fatigued. “You win and lose ballgames on the last 15 pitches,” Scherzer said.
After seeing this display, manager Buck Showalter made a call to the bullpen for Dominic Leone to relieve Scherzer. His final line was 5 2/3 innings pitched with five earned runs allowed on 11 hits and 10 strikeouts. While he struck out a lot of batters, the five earned runs stand out the most in a vital game against a potent division rival.
Despite the performance being disappointing on a greater scale, Scherzer doubled down on his positive outlook on his performance. “It’s harder to sit there and say you did something right because you want to critique yourself. I will, but there’s a lot of things I felt I did right tonight, too,” Scherzer said. This mindset will be important for the Mets to adopt as a group while they try to navigate through this losing streak.
Overall, Scherzer has been excellent as of late, so this performance should not hold too much weight in his trends for this season. However, there is something to be said about the fact that he underperformed in another important game against the Braves. Going back to last season, he has a 6.62 ERA in his last three starts against Atlanta, including that key one at the end of 2022. Since the Mets have title aspirations, they need their star pitchers to come through in games like this with high stakes.
