Shaun on the Marc
CHICAGO — Even on the night that Shaun Marcum snapped his nine-game losing streak, the talk around the Mets was about Zack Wheeler.
Brought in to fill out the rotation while the Mets develop pitching prospects, Marcum went 11 appearances without a win until Wednesday night. Marcum threw eight scoreless innings as the Mets shut out the White Sox, 3-0, at U.S. Cellular Field. The Mets (3143) won for the sixth time in their last nine games and posted their fourth shutout and second over the White Sox (3243) this season. Bobby Parnell pitched a perfect ninth for his 13th save. Eric Young Jr. went 3-for-4 to extend his hitting streak to five.
Marcum (1-9) has struggled in his first Mets season. He started the season on the DL then lost nine straight, including two in relief in extra innings. On Wednesday, he retired eight of his first 10 batters and 10 of the final 11, including seven in a row. He scattered four hits, walked two and struck out two. “It feels nice to be contributing, nice to do that every now and again. The guys played good behind me,” said Marcum, who picked up his first win since Oct. 1, 2012. “Omar ( Quintanilla) made some unbelievable plays, (John Buck) throwing the guy out at second. If I didn’t have those guys behind me I probably wouldn’t be enjoying this.” Marcum is only the third pitcher in Mets history to start a season 0-9 and the 12th to lose nine straight decisions. He avoided becoming the first pitcher to start a season 0-10 since St. Louis’ Anthony Reyes in 2007.
“I think it’s huge. Everybody’s got pride in this league. You don’t get to the big leagues without having a little bit of an ego,” Terry Collins said, “Nobody likes to look up and see a zero in the win column after their name. I think it’s a great kick-start for Shaun.”
The Mets scored all their runs in the fifth when Juan Lagares’ grounder got past shortstop Alexei Ramirez for an error, bringing in Josh Satin and Andrew Brown. Lagares scored on Young’s RBI single.
Marcum getting on track would be a boost for a rotation that lost Jon Niese to the DL last week and saw Wheeler struggle Tuesday night. The Mets figured out that Wheeler was tipping his offspeed pitches.
“I talked to Dan (Warthen) today and he did a little bit of it in Atlanta. He just made better pitches with his fastball,” Collins said. “So this is gonna get out on the scouting report — he is tipping his off-speed stuff,” Collins continued. “We gotta fix that. It’ll get fixed tomorrow.”
Wheeler, who gave up four runs on four hits, walked three and struck out one, said he had not looked at the video yet, but he plans to work it out before his next start, Sunday at Citi Field.
“I don’t know if it’s just at this level, but just, they were laying off a lot of sliders that I thought were good pitches,” Wheeler said. “Some of them they probably would have laid off of anyways, but I thought some of them were good pitches and they laid off them. It’s an easy fix. I’ll get it fixed before next start.”
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