In accordance with the theme of Saturday’s celebration, the Mets and Rockies performed an old-school recreation on Saturday.
Just just a few hours after the Old Timers’ Day recreation, which pitted legends from every decade of Mets’ historical past towards one another in a fun-spirited exhibition, the Mets beat Colorado 3-0 in a throwback, low-scoring duel. The shutout was the Mets’ seventeenth of the season, which leads the league.
“Just a great day,” Buck Showalter stated after the festivities have been over. “I think everybody was appreciative. I thought it was kind of an uplifting thing for our club too.”
Pitching towards the Rockies, Colorado native David Peterson had most likely the perfect recreation of his season. This has been an odd 12 months for Peterson. He is undoubtedly a part of the material of the Mets, who’re inarguably one of many three or 4 greatest groups within the league. But he has additionally spent a piece of the season within the minor leagues, coming as much as the majors when one other pitcher will get injured and heading proper again down after they get wholesome.
Since July 31, Peterson has now made three begins at Triple-A and three within the majors. The group elected to have him begin this recreation over Trevor Williams, who has been dynamite as their lengthy reliever, and the choice paid off handsomely. Peterson gave the Mets six innings of decisive, assured pitching. He restricted the Rockies to 4 hits and no walks, with one other zero within the all-important run class.
“It’s fun to pitch against them,” Peterson stated. “But when I get up there it’s like every other game or every other start. The opponent is nameless and faceless. I’m out there to get outs and execute pitches.”
Peterson’s slider and changeup have been dancing in excellent concord on Saturday evening. Those pitches offered the punchout on six of his seven strikeouts, along with his slider getting the ultimate two on Brendan Rogers and C.J. Cron, who every represented the tying run throughout their sixth-inning plate appearances. Altogether, the Rockies swung 27 instances towards Peterson’s slider and changeup. They missed on 11 of these, and after they did put these pitches in play, solely twice did it result in successful. None of the Rockies’ 4 hits off Peterson got here towards his changeup, which he threw 20 instances.
“I thought it was huge,” Peterson stated of the changeup. “It’s been kind of up and down for me the last couple weeks. I’ve been working on it with [pitching coach Jeremy Hefner] and talking to some other guys, picking some guys’ brains. It felt back to where I started with it at the beginning of the year. It felt good. It was a good pitch to help me get some weak contact and a couple strikeouts.”
Admittedly, it doesn’t take loads to beat the 2022 Rockies, however the stuff that Peterson had on Saturday would have probably performed towards any MLB lineup. The difficult dialog about Peterson’s function — he’s undoubtedly not assured a spot on the playoff roster, and may not see a lot common season time both as soon as Carlos Carrasco is again from his damage — will solely get extra difficult within the coming weeks.
But for one evening, when he furthered the degradation of his favourite childhood group, the steely-eyed lefty occupied a quite simple place. On just about each one among his 102 pitches on Saturday, Peterson was superb.
The identical can’t be stated for the Mets’ offense, however they as soon as once more discovered a option to win a recreation with no huge offensive inning or a galvanizing three-run homer. Instead, it was a Brandon Nimmo leadoff shot towards Kyle Freeland, a two-out double by Nimmo to attain the second run and Starling Marte utilizing the other area to drive residence the third run. Mets’ hitters solely struck out six instances and frequently put collectively their patented lengthy at-bats, however headed residence for the evening with only one hit with runners in scoring place.
Nevertheless, the Mets gained their 82nd recreation, turning into the seventh National League group within the final 10 seasons to file 82 wins of their first 128 video games. With the Braves ready like a pack of wolves to leap on any scrap of meals they’ll discover — or on this case, any slip up by the Mets — the Mets can be ok with the truth that every of these six different groups (assuming this 12 months’s Dodgers maintain on to their large NL West lead) gained their division.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com