We’re all depressed about what’s going on in the world regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, and baseball has become collateral damage. We all need to escape, and now you can read this blog in the alternate: the one where global pandemics were a myth and baseball was around no matter what. We’re imagining the 2020 Mets season as if everything was normal. Enjoy these works of fiction.
I think I join all of you in asking the following:
Where the hell did that come from?
When last we saw Rick Porcello, he was changing his number from the 22 he wore with the Red Sox to the 21 he wore with Detroit to change his mojo. It’s way too much of a coincidence that his first start with the Lucas Duda/Carlos Delgado/Elliot Maddox model that he reverts back to his Cy Young form by giving up one (!) hit and no walks in eight innings while only throwing 98 pitches. He got a lot of ground balls, which he had gotten away from in recent years. But it turns out that it was the return of the sinker, and not the uniform number, that brought about tonight’s outing.
“Hef has been working with me on relying on my sinker more. I had success with it in Detroit but with everybody going big on launch angle, I got away from it. Hef has been encouraging me to try to bring it back in certain situations and I really haven’t used it in a game too much all season, but we felt tonight was the night and got good results from it.” -Rick Porcello
Was tonight the night they brought it back because the Giants were a good team to bring it back against? They certainly killed some worms tonight as 16 of Porcello’s 24 outs were on the ground (and luckily the Mets made zero errors tonight so it worked out). Is it a pitch that we’ll see more of in the future, even though sinkers aren’t really the “en vogue launch angle friendly pitch”?
“We’ll see. Hef will kill me if I give away too much to everyone else’s scouts. But what he has hammered home to me that 90% of all of this is execution. Sinkers are still tough if you execute the pitch, no matter how many hitters have an uppercut. Once you learn that, the other 10% you can live with.”
Certainly, this will bear watching to see if Porcello will keep up this performance, and will it be on the back of his sinker or will he return to being a four-seam disciple? Find out on Sunday against San Diego.
As for the offense, Porcello certainly received enough support. Pete Alonso’s sac fly in the first got things going. But the entire lineup got in on the fun, and Rick Porcello was a part of it. His two singles in the 4th and 6th gave Brandon Nimmo extra at-bats to help him drive in five runs. Add that to Amed Rosario’s three RBI and a two run single by Robinson Cano, you have an 11-1 victory in San Francisco.
The best part was that if you had told me that Wilmer Flores would hit a 9th inning home run against the Mets, I’d tell you that it would absolutely be a walk-off. Instead, it was while the Giants were down 11 and the home run, of Walker Lockett, didn’t hurt at all. And SNY won’t make a five hour documentary out of it … this time.
Today’s Hate List
- Jeff Kent
- Barry Bonds
- Russ Ortiz
- Shane Victorino
- J.T. Snow
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