Mattingly: ‘This kid’s growing up right in front of our eyes’
outs. He outpitched deGrom for the second time in nine major league starts. Rogers got his first big league win against him in a 5-3 victory last Aug. 31. This was his second.
“Best in baseball, Jacob deGrom is,” Rogers said. “You really have to bring your best and then some. To see me and our whole team go out and compete with the best, it just shows you how good we are.”
A 2017 first-round draft pick, Rogers mixed a fastball averaging 95 mph with a slider and changeup, inducing 19 swing-and-misses among his 82 pitches. He ended his outing with strikeouts of Conforto and Alonso, stranding two runners to preserve a 1-0 lead.
“This kid’s growing up right in front of our eyes,” Miami manager Don Mattingly said.
Added deGrom: “Their guy was really good on the mound.”
DeGrom was still impressive, too. He held the Marlins to five hits, did not walk a batter and struck out 14 over eight innings.
But Chisholm’s solo home run in the second inning gave the Marlins all the run support they needed.
Chisholm took a 100 mph strike to start the at-bat, then found himself swinging too fast for a 99 mph pitch. He claims he was looking for something offspeed when deGrom reached back for a third straight heater — 100 above the letters.
“He threw me a fastball up and I just reacted to it,” said Chisholm.
“Got my hands above the ball, and yeah, it was a homer.”
Chisholm, the No. 63 overall prospect in MLB and No. 4 in the Marlins’ system, is the first player to ever hit a home run off deGrom on an 0-2 count. He’s also the 11th rookie to hit a home run off deGrom and third Marlins rookie to accomplish the feat (also Isan Diaz in 2019 and Brian Anderson in 2018).
The Marlins added a pair of insurance runs in the ninth on RBI singles from Jesus Aguilar and Miguel Rojas.
Yimi Garcia converted the Marlins’ first save of the season with a scoreless ninth inning.
The 32-year-old deGrom still looks better than ever in his eighth major league season. Not only is he averaging 99 mph with his fastball — up from 94 mph when he debuted in 2014 — the pitch is dropping one inch less on average than it did in 2020, making it look to batters like it’s moving up in the strike zone as it approaches.