From Egregious To Exhilarating

We were headed towards a familiar story. Jacob deGrom, with zero margin for error, doesn’t get a big hit from the offense early in the game and then gets tagged late to lose the game. Except that in this case, the Mets couldn’t get a big hit in Colorado for the first two innings (then gets victimized by a hard hit James McCann ball in the 4th that turned into a double play), deGrom cuts through the Rockies lineup with nine straight strikeouts from the 2nd through the 4th, and then gives up three unearned runs in the fifth due to a Jeff McNeil error on a ball up the middle (which ended deGrom’s shot at tying Tom Seaver’s record of 10 straight K’s), a triple which was only a triple because Michael Conforto horribly played the Dom Nunez ball off the wall, and then a sac fly where Conforto’s throw was on the other side of the bag. Then for good measure, a home run to Raimel Tapia on a slider down and in which Tapia went down and got.

The fact that deGrom finished the game with a career high 14 K’s in six innings, while the Mets couldn’t get a big hit in Coors Field would have made this the most egregious case of costing deGrom a victory, ever. And that’s saying a lot. You could see deGrom after the sac fly lose his swagger and slump his shoulders. That doesn’t happen very often even after the most horrible of great starts wasted.

But after Pete Alonso drew the Mets closer with a 6th inning solo home run to make it 3-2, the Mets hit the top of the 7th with purpose. McCann with a first pitch single off Daniel Bard. Then Jonathan Villar doubled to right to bring home pinch runner Albert Almora with a great slide around the catcher to get his pinky on the plate, Then after an infield single by Brandon Nimmo where Ryan McMahon did a great job to keep Villar from scoring with a diving play, Francisco Lindor had his “Welcome to New York” moment with a single to the right side to give the Mets the lead.

Now, the Mets had three chances to tack on with runners on first and second and nobody out, but Dom Smith lined out to right, and Alonso and McNeil struck out to give Edwin Diaz the slimmest of leads. But Diaz came in and cut through the Rockies’ bottom of the order with three K’s, giving the Mets a 4-3 win most importantly, but 17 K’s out of 21 possible outs in a seven inning game.

17 of the 21 outs Mets pitchers got in G1 were strikeouts, 81%

That's the highest percentage of outs that were strikeouts by a team's pitchers in a game in the Modern Era (since 1900), surpassing a Sept 25, 2016 Red Sox game at the Rays (77% of outs by BOS P)

(h/t @EliasSports)

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) April 17, 2021

That’s four straight wins for the Mets with another crack at Colorado in … a few minutes. Enjoy.

Today’s Game 1 Hate List

1. Bruce Dreckman’s strike zone.
2. Not scoring runs off a guy named Chi-Chi.
3. Ryan McMahon
4. Raimel Tapia
5. Josh Fuentes