How do you celebrate clinching the NL East for the first time since 2006? The Mets did it by sending out a lineup with seven reserves, Michael Conforto and Jacob deGrom. And this makeshift lineup gave the Mets their third straight blowout win with an 8-1 victory over the Reds.
- With the win, the Mets finished 7-0 this year against the Reds. It was the fifth four-game sweep of the year for New York and the 15th overall sweep.
- Making his first appearance since 9/15, deGrom struck out nine over six innings and allowed just one run. He picked up his 14th win of the season.
- The makeshift lineup pounded out 13 hits, led by Dilson Herrera, who had three hits, including a homer. Herrera had a shot at the cycle but flew out to left field in the ninth. He also had a walk in the game.
- Cleanup hitter Kevin Plawecki also homered. As a team the Mets now have 172 HR this season.
- Reds fans didn’t go home completely disappointed. Reds pitchers struck out 11 Mets, which gave all fans in the park free pizza.
Our new friends in Colorado are up 9-4 in the seventh inning after trailing 4-2, looking to sweep the division leaders.This means the Mets could be up 1 1/2 games on the Dodgers by day’s end. Then, the Dodgers go to San Francisco, who should be cranky about losing the division to their arch rivals. Go Giants!
We also learned that Jacob deGrom can pitch with a minor hangover.
Ah, to be young again!
With deGrom, the changeup is the key pitch. It’s almost like he gets into trouble when the FB is too good and he begins to rely on it too much.
No need to worry about deGrom……or Harvey….or Syndergaard……or Matz……or even Niese and Colon. All present and accounted for.
I loved Herrera’s at bat vs Chapman the other night as he hung in there and wasn’t overmatched. Today was a preview of things to come.
It can’t be called a “C” lineup because they won. So what do you call it?
KP even “cleaned up”. Where was EY Jr, inquiring minds want to know.
Things are out of control in DC with the Harper-Papelbon scuffle.
1 1/2 game lead on the Dodgers for home field advantage and 22 games above .500.
Did you see that “hit” by DeGrom, the minimalist effort to catch the ball on the part of Ivan Dejesus? I wonder what he wants to do for a living.
When you find yourself thinking “Lucas Duda/Mike Piazza/Daniel Murphy/Jason Phillips woulda had that one,” you know the guy couldn’t have been trying.
Just noticed something: DeGrom struck out Joey Votto twice, which is nice, Votto being one of the four or five best offensive players alive. But watching the video clip I noticed that Votto was choked way, way up on the bat for that final strike; he looked like Ray Oyler up there.
(Oyler was a middle infielder who briefly wore the Detroit uniform. At least one year they had him show off his choked-up grip for his baseball card photo.)