NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN...
Mets fare well in NL East, but can’t beat Mother Nature
You can’t let Jacob deGrom down if you never play the game. For the sixth time this year, a Mets game was postponed. Thursday’s game against the Phillies will be made up on Friday, June 25, as part of a doubleheader.
DeGrom was scheduled to pitch as the Mets went for the four-game sweep of the Phillies. Instead, for the sixth time in 13 scheduled games, the Mets were postponed. Three dates were wiped out by COVID against the Nationals, and three more by rain, including Thursday afternoon’s game. The Mets (5-3) managed to play three games against the Phillies in five tries.
The first rainout came when they played against the Marlins for seven minutes on Sunday, angering pitcher Marcus Stroman.
Manager Luis Rojas said after the rainout that deGrom would pitch tonight against the Rockies, followed by Joey Lucchesi on Saturday and Stroman on Sunday.
The night game in Denver (which, with snow in the forecast, might not even be played) means deGrom won’t have a chance to lower his all-time MLB-leading 1.80 ERA in day games. Instead, he’ll be going for his first win during a season in which he’s allowed one run in 14 innings.
The last time deGrom took the mound, he matched a career-high with 14 strikeouts and yet again took the loss, 3-0, to the Marlins on Saturday. Only 25 of deGrom’s 47 career double-digit strikeout games have led to wins.
“Right now, we can take advantage of the seven-inning games,” Rojas said of the likely heavy slate of doubleheaders in June that could be timed to the returns of Noah Syndergaard and Carlos Carrasco. “We’ll be a lot deeper pitching-wise,” he said. “But we gotta be mindful of the workload of the guys.”
“We’re expecting to play tomorrow,” Rojas said of the Denver forecast for this weekend. He did say that the team probably wouldn’t take on-field batting practice tonight.
Tomas Nido, scheduled to catch deGrom on Thursday afternoon, made the most of it by sprinting onto the wet tarp and perfectly using it as a slip and slide. The Mets let fans into the noon game before it was canceled, and those who trekked to Flushing in the rain at least got to cheer Nido’s huge splash.
When the Mets do play, they’ve been hot. They won all three games against the Phillies, and Rojas praised his team’s starting pitching and baserunning, in particular. “We worked hard in spring training to make sure that we didn’t have any holes, and that’s how we looked in the three games that we played,” he said.