The Mets beat the Marlins Saturday night, and while they didn’t score eight in the first — or eight at all — it was a pretty convincing victory. The headline was that Jacob deGrom [1] looked like his old self once again: On Saturday he carved the Marlins up for the first three innings with a one-two punch of fastball and slider, then added the changeup in the middle innings, which was borderline unfair.
The Marlins aren’t very good (perhaps you’ve heard), but deGrom had the stuff to dominate any team — witness his fourth-inning demolition of former comrade-in-arms Neil Walker [2], batting with nobody out after a Starlin Castro [3] single. DeGrom got two swinging strikes with the changeup, tried to lure Walker with a high fastball, threw a changeup and a slider that he fought off, then threw a change that dived out of the strike zone, which Walker missed for strike three. Walker had no chance — once deGrom had him on the ropes with the changeup, the question wasn’t so much if he’d get him but how, exactly, he’d do it.
DeGrom was actually behind at the time, a product of being ambushed by back-to-back doubles by Jon Berti [4] and pitcher Sandy Alcantara [5], the eighth and ninth hitters in the Miami lineup. No matter: the Mets tied it in the fourth and went ahead in the sixth, as Don Mattingly [6] (who’s all but blinking HELP ME in Morse code these days) left Alcantara in too long.
Alcantara’s downfall arrived via back-to-back homers to Pete Alonso [7] and Michael Conforto [8] that left the Marlins behind 2-1 and then 3-1. The homers were a fun contrast: Alonso’s just cleared the fence in right-center, and was basically muscled out of the park by our favorite gigantic enthusiastic rookie, while Conforto’s was a no-doubter, a fastball left over the plate that he destroyed. Throw in an RBI single by deGrom himself and the Mets had more than enough to win [9].
Should deGrom be back to his old self again — as his last three starts suggest he is — maybe they’ll even win some more. That would be welcome, not to mention highly advisable.