SOMETHING IN THE AIR
SAN FRANCISCO — Matt Harvey had carried the “ace” title, even in absentia, for most of the last three Mets seasons, but there is little question he has been dethroned.
Jacob deGrom will not only represent the team in the All Star Game next week, but is the answer to the question: Whowould the Mets most want on the mound if they had to win one game?
Calling anybody other than deGrom the team “ace” at this point would be blasphemy.
In a performance Wednesday that ranked as maybe his best of the season, deGrom fired eight shutout innings against the Giants in helping the Mets to a 41 victory at AT& TPark.
“Whenever it’s your day to pitch you’re the ace that day,” deGrom said, deflecting talk he had emerged as the top gun. “That title, I don’t look that much into it.”
The Mets ( 4442) won four of six games against the Dodgers and Giants for their first winning road trip of the season. Before heading to the All Star break, the Mets will face the Diamondbacks for three games at Citi Field, beginning Friday.
DeGrom( 96, 2.14 ERA) allowed only two hits with one walk and struck out 10 for the seventh doubledigit strikeout game of his career.
“It’s like a video game out there with him,” catcher Kevin Plawecki said. “He’s a lot of fun to catch.”
The Mets received a muchneeded cushion in the ninth, when Eric Campbell hit a tworun homer against Jean Machi that extended the lead to 40. The blast was the Mets’ first in 10 games, and Campbell became the team’s first player other than Curtis Granderson to hit a homer since June 18.
“Are we a big power team?” hitting coach Kevin Long asked rhetorically. “I don’t think we’re a big power team, so we’re going to go through some stretches where we don’t hit home runs.”
After Bobby Parnell allowed a run in the bottom of the inning, Jeurys Familia got the final two outs for his 24th save in26 chances.
Jake Peavy ( 04) kept the Giants in the game by allowing two runs, one unearned, on six hits and one walk over seven innings. All six of the hits allowed by Peavy were singles.
The pitching matchup was a rematch from last August at Citi Field, when deGrom and Peavy each took a nohitter into the seventh inning. DeGrom got the victory that night, which served among the highlights in his NL Rookie of the Year campaign.
DeGrom was asked if Wednesday ranked as his best performance of 2015.
“I felt really good today, I think itwas one of them,” he said. “I had good defense behind me: Juan [ Lagares] made some great catches out there when a couple of balls were hit hard. That helps out a lot, too.”
The Mets received some rare help fromthe bottom of the lineup to score a run in the seventh and take a 20 lead. Campbell and deGrom singled in succession against Peavy before Lagares brought in the run with an RBI fielder’s choice.
Brandon Crawford’s throwing error in the sixth allowed the Mets to score the game’s first run.
In the third, Murphy’s throwing error on Justin Maxwell’s grounder gave the Giants a leadoff base runner and Gregor Blanco walked to give the Giants a rally before the Mets caught a break: Joe Panik hit a sinking line drive to left and Maxwell was late breaking from second, allowing Campbell to throw out the runner advancing to third.
“We have not played well on the coast and we talked about what a tough month of July we were going to face,” manager Terry Collins said. “We got off to a slow start and if we had a bad week here we were going to be in tough straits. It was a big win for us.”