The Mets pitched their first shutout of 2025 on Friday, and it all started at the top with Tylor Megill.

There’s a lot of season left. But Megill is 2-for-2 in posting strong outings thus far, as he twirled another gem in a 5-0 defeat of the Blue Jays in the Mets’ home opener.

Megill threw the first 5 1/3 innings of the shutout. He’s allowed just one run in 10 1/3 innings on the season so far, while striking out 10.

He struck out four and walked three on Friday, with two of the free passes being the final two batters he faced. Other than that final lapse of control, he maintained near-dominance for his entire start. He surrendered only two hits to the team with the highest batting average in the American League.

Megill had a solid four-pitch mix going, led by his four-seam fastball and slider. Each of his four primary pitches got at least one swing-and-miss, with his slider collecting the most with four.

The first three outs, as part of a 1-2-3 first inning, all came on the slider. He got Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to ground out to third, then struck out Anthony Santander on a slider in the dirt. On Santander, he’d located his fastball up in the zone to get ahead.

He continued to utilize both his slider and curveball while spotting his fastball well. He threw four consecutive sliders to old friend Andrés Giménez, two of which Giménez fouled off — before Megill got him to go down swinging on a low curve for the first out of the second.

The second out of the frame was another groundout to third on a Megill slider, this time by Alejandro Kirk. That made four groundouts to third among the first five batters Megill faced, all on sliders.

He became less pristine as that inning wore on, though. He gave up a triple to George Springer and a walk to Will Wagner. As he got deeper into the game, he started relying more on his fastball and sinker. Guerrero Jr. singled off his slider in the third inning, but he got Bichette to stare at a sinker in the bottom part of the zone for a called punchout.

That hit by Guerrero Jr. was the last base knock Megill allowed. He settled in, still utilizing his breaking pitches occasionally but commanding the zone more with his sinker. He retired eight batters in a row at one point.

Walks to Guerrero Jr. and Santander ended his evening. He lost Guerrero after getting ahead 0-2, curiously mixing in a couple of changeups in that sequence. They were the only changeups he threw all evening. He couldn’t dot the edges with his fastball, and Carlos Mendoza pulled him before things could get out of hand.

Reed Garrett‘s nasty relief performance bailed Megill out on the two walks. Megill clapped his hands in satisfaction from the dugout, as his goose egg in the runs column was secured.

He ended up throwing 82 pitches with 48 strikes (58.5%) — an imperfect night command-wise, despite starting locked-in. He threw his four-seam 35% of the time, with his slider only slightly behind at 33%. He averaged 95.3 mph on the four-seam, which was softer than his first start but about in line with last year’s mark. His sinker and curveball on Friday were used 18 and 11 percent of the time, respectively.

Megill has seen plenty of ups and downs throughout his time in the big leagues. But he’s given the Mets pretty much all they could have asked for in his first two starts of the year.

Most of the remaining question marks surrounding Megill are about endurance and sustainability. He’s shown flashes in the past, only to eventually falter. He’ll also, ideally, start going a little deeper into games, and he needs to show that he can keep his stuff sharp for that long. Even in Friday’s successful outing, there was some fading towards the end.

Last year, he was effective when pitching the third time through the order. He averaged only a hair over five innings per start, though.

The Mets will gladly take a 0.87 ERA through two outings. And the Mets are now 8-0 in Megill’s last eight starts dating back to Aug. 30, 2024. How Megill builds on this strong start, now, will be a storyline to pay attention to — particularly for a currently Sean Manaea-less rotation that’s full of question marks up and down.