Domingo Tapia made his best start of the season and led the St. Lucie Mets to a 3-2 win over the Brevard County Manatees on Wednesday at Space Coast Stadium.
Tapia stifled the Manatees over seven shutout innings. He allowed just three singles and three walks. A big part of of Tapia’s game was the ground ball out. He induced three double plays.
Tapia’s final pitch in the seventh resulted in an inning-ending 5-4-3 double play off the bat of Yadiel Rivera.
Jairo Perez sparked the Mets offense. He was involved in all three runs, driving in two with a single in the first against Hobbs Johnson and scoring the third and final run for the Mets in the fourth on Eudy Pina’s sac fly. Perez went 3 for 4.
Randy Fontanez pitched a shaky ninth to earn the save. The Mets took a 3-0 lead to the final frame but Nicky Delmonico doubled home Tyrone Talyor to put the Manatees on the board. With two outs, Alfredo Rodriguez drove in Delmonico to make it 3-2.
Fontanez settled down to get Rivera to ground out to third to end the game with the tying run on first.
Tapia improved to 2-4 on the season. Chase Huchingson pitched a perfect eighth to get his first hold.
Johnson took the loss. He gave up three runs, two earned, and four hits over six innings.
One night after injuring his left ankle fielding a ball in center field, Brandon Nimmo was back in the lineup batting second and playing center. He singled in the first, stole third base and scored.
Third baseman Aderlin Rodriguez was activated off the disabled list and played in his first game since May 14. He went 0 for 4.
The Mets (31-21) snapped a two-game losing streak. They lead the Fort Myers Miracle by 1.5 games for first place in the Florida State League South Division with 18 games remaining in the first half. - team press release
4 comments:
Good for Nimmo to be healthy and Tapia to pitch well. Still puzzled why hard-throwing Domingo is striking almost month one out.
That is, curious why Domingo is striking almost no one out. Love that spelling autocorrect.
@Tom
This is exactly why I don't have him ranked very highly on the prospect list. 100 mph fastballs and 96mph sliders are nice.....but if you can't strike anyone out it generally means the movement on the pitches are lackluster.
Personally I like to see double digit K/9 rates at the lower levels from top pitching prospects and rates of 8.0 to 9.0 at the upper levels.
Tapia's career rate is 6.8 and this year its 3.9.....He's actually BB'd (22) more than he's K'd (20). That's just not gonna cut it.
I could not agree more, Chris. The only thing we don't know is if they have him throwing secondary stuff a lot to develop it, and that is the cause. But if not, and I were Domingo, I would know they look for high K rates from power pitchers, because guys in the majors who don't strike out lots of guys and succeed are rare, and figure out a way to double or triple his K rate. Maybe he can't because of lack of movement - he needs to figure it out.
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