Kodai Senga recovered from a rough first inning to help lead the Mets to a 5-1 victory over the Marlins Sunday afternoon. With the win, the Mets take the series, 3-1, to get off to a fine start in 2023.
Senga was staked to a 2-0 lead. But the Marlins pitcher ended up throwing a ton of pitches in the first inning, delaying Senga’s first trip to the mound. The cameras showed Senga restless in the dugout, pacing back and forth while awaiting his turn to pitch. It’s not hard to imagine that delay causing Senga’s rough start.
He gave up hits to the first two batters and saw the lead cut in half. Senga loaded the bases before recording an out. But he fought back with two strikeouts and then Starling Marte was in the right place at the right time to catch a line drive to end the inning.
From that point on, the Marlins did not mount much of a threat offensively. Senga went 5.1 IP and had 8 Ks, picking up his first win in MLB in his first start. The Mets continued with solid relief pitching, getting 3.2 scoreless innings from the pen.
The offensive star was Tommy Pham, who had three hits and a walk. He had a two-run homer to center that traveled 433 feet. He also had an RBI double in the seventh inning on a ball that should have been caught by Jazz Chisholm, who simply had a rough series in his first action as a CFer.
Up next for the Mets is a trip to Milwaukee. We’ll get our first glimpse if the Mets’ pitching is this good or if the Marlins are just a bad offensive team. In 35 IP in the four games against Miami, Mets pitchers allowed just eight runs for a 2.06 ERA.
Nice to see Senga pitch out of bases loaded and no outs. Was worried that he was going to get shelled even if he was pitching against the Marlins. Guess we can stop piling on Pham for a few days given his big day at the plate with 3 of our 5 hits including a homer crushed to center. Nice job by the pen who need to get used to pitching more often than last year. Kudos to Buck for pulling the right strings. Always love being in first place.
Tommy Pham. Or should we now call him Tommy Phenom.
I think Brian might call him Tommy Sham!
1 run in 13.2 innings for the bullpen. All 26 played in the series. Relatively ho hum 3 out of 4 on the road doing exactly what was needed. 2 out of 3 in Mil up next.
Gut Reaction: not striking out is so important. Case in point, first inning: McNeil makes contact on a weak tapper with two strikes near the pitcher and it results in a hit and two runs. Senga is on the ropes with the bases loaded and the one run lead with nobody out and he strikes out two consecutive Miami batters and then a fly ball out and escapes the jam. And that is the turning point of the game.
Another scoreless and solid game from the bullpen. Great job!
I read that Pham got new contact lenses. Is it possible that he will be good for our Mets?!
We’ll see!
We will – but will Pham?
From what I’ve read, Pham has some rare eye condition that necessitates constant changing of his prescription, like on a yearly basis. Hopefully this year’s prescription is better than what he’s had recently.
Nice to walk away with 3 wins in 4 games. Its been nice to see a mix of home runs and station to station abilities. And no doubt, the defense, aside from Marte’s misadventure has looked pretty good. (And his decision to run to third base in a non force situation with 2 outs does not ring of Showalter baseball). A lot to feel good about.
But its time to be well aware of one basic fact: The team has played 108 outs so far and starting pitching has only delivered 64 outs for a pretty sad 59% of innings played. We’re all naturally celebrating the grit of the pen performing admirably, but if starters only come up with 16 outs per game, the pen overload will become dramatic and painful. We’ve see it before, but now starters only going 5 1/3 innings is not good news. They need to be going 19-20 outs.
I agree that SP need to go longer. But traditionally, SP go shorter in April than they do in other months of the year. It wasn’t until the 12th game last year that a SP gave more than 18 outs. Here are the by month games where a SP gave the Mets more than 18 outs in 2022:
April – 4
May – 7
June – 8
July – 8
August – 12
September – 5
The Mets had the 10th-fewest innings from their bullpen among the 30-MLB teams last year.
There have been 877.2 IP in the majors so far this year and starters have thrown 497.2 of them or 57% of them, making the Mets slightly better than average.
I want to see more IP from the starters but I’m not much worried at all about it at this point. Something to monitor, for sure.