Erasmo Ramirez came out of the bullpen to pitch three scoreless innings to nail down the win for the Mets, as they edged the Blue Jays, 18-1, Friday night in Buffalo. A ridiculous location for an MLB game deserves a ridiculous lede. Sorry, Buffalo, you’re not a major league city. Enjoy those Quad-A players you get to see in a normal year.
Jacob deGrom was the beneficiary of the big offensive night, the second straight start where the Mets have backed him with double-digit runs. It might not make up for two years’ worth of no support but it’s still nice to see. deGrom allowed a first inning run but then was dominant in the second and third innings. He had to sit for over half an hour between the third and fourth innings and was unable to maintain his earlier pace. Still, he struck out nine batters in six innings and lowered his ERA to 1.67 for the season.
Dominic Smith hit his first career grand slam and Michael Conforto hit a three-run shot and had 4 RBIs and 4 runs scored. Robinson Cano, Jeff McNeil and Wilson Ramos each had three hits, and Ramos joined Conforto with the 4-4 Runs-RBIs combo. McNeil got two gift hits, having a pop fly lost by the outfielders in the lights and a ground ball to first where the position player pitching didn’t cover first base.
With the win, deGrom upped his record to 4-1 and the Mets are now 7-2 in games he’s started here in 2020. The Mets are now 9-4 in blowout games, ones decided by five or more runs. And they evened their road record at 11-11.
Funny how I wished the Mets would put on a Braves like display and voila here they go. Got to feel good playing against a team more deeply in the race and taking them down a peg. Tonight they had it all. On to tomorrow!
On to tomorrow is right and in somewhat of a good break for the Mets, bad for the Braves, Acuna hurt his foot tonight and will miss some games. Don’t know yet how many.
Three games under .500, and time to start getting it into overdrive and going. Winning all three in upstate will still put them one game back, but the journey of a million miles also started with a single step. It may be said that I’m getting ahead of myself but if they are to make up ground they need to accumulate wins in bunches; the time is short.
Gut Reaction: a blowout with a dominating pitching performance and an awesome offense display.
Ramirez is a real possibility to to start the 19th. He is putting zeroes on the scoreboard.
Ramos has hopefully awakened his bats up. He has a 87 OPS+.
Smith is quietly having a great year. He leads the team with 1.051 OPS.
8 of the 9 starters have a 109 OPS+.
The but reality is that they are still three games under .500.