Paul Sewald came in to pitch the 11th inning on Tuesday night and struck out two batters in the top of the inning to keep the game tied at 4-4.
In the bottom of the inning, the Mets’ offense would manage to give Sewald something that he had never gotten before in his career.
When Brandon Nimmo got his walk-off walk, Sewald recorded his first major league victory, which set an MLB record for the most amount of games (118) needed to get that as well as the most innings (139) required to do so. As noted by Anthony Dicomo of MLB.com, that was 38 more games than the next closest person for that statistic.
Just to point out, though, the win statistic isn’t a reliable stat to judge pitchers off of, especially for relievers.
For example, Edwin Diaz got a win against the Phillies earlier this month in which he blew a save by giving up a two-run homer to J.T. Realmuto. He recorded a win because Pete Alonso got a walk-off walk later in the bottom half of the inning.
“You see relievers get wins by fluke all the time,” Sewald mentioned. “You can pitch poorly and get a win. But it’s good just at least to have one.”
Nonetheless, this statistic made for an extremely interesting tidbit after the game that saved the Mets’ season for at least one more day.
On the year, Sewald has a 4.42 ERA, 3.00 FIP, and 1.091 WHIP. He also is averaging 10.3 K/9 as compared to 1.5 BB/9. Every single one of those stats mentioned just now is a career-best for him, albeit in significantly fewer appearances (16) at the major league level than he had in his first two seasons (103 combined).
