Thursday afternoon at Citi Field, Jacob deGrom was dominant as he shut down a team that scored 19 runs against the Mets in the last two games.Meanwhile Lucas Duda hit a pair of homers and drove in 4, the Mets claim a split of the 4 game series with a 5-0 win.
DeGrom went 8 innings allowing just 1 hit. He retired his last 23 batters he faced and struck out 11 in the win. The Mets took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 4th when John Mayberry’s RBI single scored Duda. Then in the 6th Duda connected for a solo homer, his 4th on the year and it was 2-0 Mets, in the 8th Duda greeted Randy Choate's first pitch with a 3 run homer, his 5th overall on the year and it was 5-0 Mets. Duda's mastery of lefties continues. Both his bombs were against lefties (Garcia and Choate). That was more than deGrom and the Mets needed. deGrom improves to 5-4 on the year and lowers his season ERA to 2.75. Jamie Garcia, just off the DL was surprisingly effective as he went 7 allowing 5 hits the 2 runs (earned) he walked 2 and struck out 5. He’s the hard luck loser falling to 0-1. Jeurrys Familia pitched the 9th in a non-save situation.
Hitting-wise the Mets had 9 hits on the day, Duda went 2 for 3 with the 2 dingers and 4 RBI, Michael Cuddyer added 3 hits on the day.
With the win the Mets improve to 17-6 at home and are 24-18 overall and climb to within a ½ game of the idle Nationals.
Friday Night the Mets are off to Pittsburgh to take on the Bucs. Noah Syndergaard (1-1 3.18) goes for the Amazins, Gerrit Cole (5-2 2.40) goes for the Pirates
Sweet win, deGrom shows why he is a coequal #1 with Harvey, and Duda boosted his All Star game chances. Nice.
ReplyDeleteI still say Duda is now a bonafide all star at this point, and Mets will still regret not locking him up to extension before this season started. . Hopefully it only costs them some millions and not Duda Smash altogether.
ReplyDeleteThomas, I hope you noticed that both of Duda's HRs came on the first pitch.
ReplyDeleteAs we recently discussed here. The power comes early in the count; good to see him swinging the bat. Not recklessly, but with more aggression.
Absolutely. Duda is absolutely terrific with one strike or less, horrific with 2 strikes. I saw that both homers were first pitch, and was thrilled. Saw he is 10-16 when ball put in play on first pitch.
ReplyDeletePitchers will realize that, try to make him fisf, he wont due to a very good eye, and have lots of favorable hitter counts he'll do damage in. He just has to stay aggressive And he'll dazzle us.
It's not just Duda, it's every hitter hitter in the game. Once you have two strikes on you, everything changes and the SLG numbers go way down across all of baseball.
ReplyDeleteI will always believe that part of d'Arnaud's success, and certainly the key to his turnaround, was when he stopped trying to hit "the Sandy Alderson way." The guy swings the bat.
James Preller