David Peterson’s first start of the season for the Mets didn’t start out too well: He threw three straight out of the zone. But he followed it up with three straight strikes to tally his first strikeout. Two pitches after his first rebound, Peterson would be looking to bouncing-back once again as Otto Lopez collected the first hit and first run off the left-hander when he drilled a 93 mph sinker 385 feet off the facade of the second deck in right field.
But that was the theme of the night: Peterson would get into a spot of bother but would recover and not allow much further damage as he kept the Marlins to just two runs in six innings of work in the Mets’ 10-4 win in Miami.
“Solid day,” the left-hander graded his nine-strikeout debut in a “great team win.”
In all, the tall 29-year-old had rough patches – like issuing back-to-back walks to start the second – but followed it up with good stuff – like fielding a sacrifice bunt cleanly before striking out the next two to close that frame. And in the fourth, Miami had runners at the corners, but an 0-1 slider to Liam Hicks got the job done aided by a nifty 3-6-3 double-play.
“I thought he was pretty good,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Even though he didn’t have the [sinker]. Missing arm side, but I thought the slider was really good. The changeup was good, and [he] made pitches when needed.
“… Strinking out nine? On a day when the sinker wasn’t there, as you want it. Gave us six solid innings, got the win.”
Peterson felt the sinker was “fine” but is going to require some tightening up ahead of his next start – as he got just eight called strikes and whiffs on 28 offerings. (For his part, he said it will be an “easy adjustment” to make.) Of course, that was not the case with his slider, which was whiffed six times on seven Marlins swings.
The lefty credited the work he had put in to the slider, which gave him the “shape he wanted to see” and allowed him to “put it where we wanted to and get those swings and misses.”
Overall, Peterson threw 57 strikes out of 89 pitches and managed to keep his pitch count down, even with congestion on the basepaths from five hits and three walks.
“He’s a guy that continues to find a way, especially when he gets in trouble, there’s traffic, there’s an ability to slow the game down and continue to make pitches,” Mendoza said of his starter. “He did that today… he was not getting ahead early in the game and then some walks, but was able to manage his pitch count.”
And after the Mets’ bats broke the game up with seven runs in the fifth frame, the left-hander came out with 10 straight strikes to start the home half.
“That’s what you want to see, especially when we had an inning the way we had it, you want your pitchers to attack,” Mendoza said. “Give us a shutdown inning, get the offense back in the dugout.”
In that fifth, after allowing a one-out double, Peterson showed off his smarts fielding a comebacker and quickly pivoting to get the runner in a rundown to eliminate the scoring chance.
“It was awesome to watch our offense do their thing and have a huge inning like that,” he said. “I think for me, it’s about being ready when that inning’s over to go back out and keep the lead.”
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