STEVEN NOW BATZ MAN
Joins Mets’ pitchers’ hit parade, tops L.A.
LOS ANGELES — Steven Matz has the pitching down. Now it was just a matter of keeping up with his Mets rotation mates at the plate.
Matz (5-1) won his fifth straight start, hurling six solid innings as the Mets beat the Dodgers, 4-2, Monday night in L.A. He allowed two runs and six hits in six innings and struck out five in the opener of a four-game series.
But Mets pitchers have been helping themselves in a big way the previous two games. Bartolo Colon, of course, stunned the baseball world with his amazing home run Saturday night. Matt Harvey, the Dark Knight himself, got into the act Sunday with two hits. Matz kept the Mets’ oneteam campaign against the DH going Monday night, stroking an RBI double in the sixth inning to give himself an insurance run.
Kevin Plawecki, filling in for the injured Travis d’Arnaud as the regular catcher, guided Matz and the bullpen to the victory and hit his first home run of the season.
The Mets have won three straight (20-11) and two straight over the Dodgers dating back to last fall’s NLDS.
In their first meeting since that emotion playoff series, there was no sign of the Mets aiming for retribution over the play that broke former shortstop Ruben Tejada’s leg. Chase Utley, who slide-tackled Tejada on the play, who entered the game in the seventh. With a two-run lead to protect, Hansel Robles coaxed a ground out to first from the Dodgers second baseman. In the ninth, Jeurys Familia, who picked up his 11th save, got Utley to ground out to second. Both times the former Phillie was booed by a large group of Mets fans in Dodger Stadium.
Matz allowed his first home run since his disastrous first start of the season April 11. Trayce Thompson’s two-run homer snapped Matz’s streak of 16.2 scoreless inning and were just the third and fourth runs the left-hander had allowed in 29 innings.
Matz allowed just those two runs and gave up six hits. He walked one. Matz leads all rookies with five wins this season and he is tied for the lead with Dodgers rookie Kenta Maeda with 35 strikeouts on the season.
Plawecki helped Jim Henderson, who came in with one out and the
tying run on first base, settle in after a rare Juan Lagares error and an Antonio Bastardo walk had the Mets in a tight spot. After Henderson fell behind to Yasiel Puig 2-0, they got the Dodgers slugger to strikeout. Henderson coaxed a pop up out from Thompson to get the Mets out of the jam.
And of course, Plawecki contributed with the Mets’ early offense.
Curtis Granderson had his second lead-off homer of the season, the 37th of his career, off Scott Kazmir to give Matz a cushion. Plawecki hit a solo shot to left in second and Asdrubal Cabrera, who Kazmir hit with a pitch, scored on Yoenis Cespedes’ single to left in the third.
Matz helped his cause with an RBI-double in the sixth.
Plawecki also helped his own cause Monday night and over the weekend, Plawecki caught three of the four games and went 4-for-10 in the series against the Padres with three hard-hit doubles.
Plawecki almost started the season in Triple-A, because the Mets wanted him to work on his offensive part of the game. In spring training, however, none of the other catchers in camp established themselves as solid defensive backups, so the Mets decided to protect their young pitching staff and try to work Plawecki into the games as d’Arnaud’s back-up.
D’Arnaud, who has been on the disabled list since April 26 with a strained right rotator cuff, was examined by team doctors in New York and given a platelet-rich plasma injection. He was shut down from throwing for now, but rest and not surgery is the course of action, assistant general manager John Ricco said.
So Plawecki has no reason to be looking over his shoulder or looking at this time as a shorttime chance to prove himself.
The Mets do have a veteran back-up catcher in place right now, having added Rene Rivera to the roster after he was cut from the Rays at the end of spring training. So anything Plawecki can show them now may be helpful when d’Arnaud is ready and the Mets front office has to make a roster move.
“The second I start thinking that this is a one shot type of deal, it’s just not the right way to look at it,” Plawecki said. “It’s not the way I felt. I comfortable in the box, I felt like I had some good at-bats leading up to this series, it was just a matter of continuing with the process, sticking with the plan.”
Monday night, the plan seemed to be working.