< Jacob deGrom struck
Out nine straight batters and finished with 14 strikeouts overall to lift the Mets to a 4-3 win over the Rockies.
— Jacob deGrom struck out nine straight batters against Colorado on Saturday, falling one shy of matching Tom Seaver's major league record.
He fell short of the record and nearly missed a win.
DeGrom finished with 14 strikeouts to lead the New York Mets over the Rockies 4-3 in a doubleheader opener.
He threw his last pitch trailing and wound up with a win for just the third time — the first since 2015.
Seaver set the record against San Diego on April 22, 1970, striking out his final 10 batters in a 19-strikeout performance.
"That would have been nice to reach but fell a little short," deGrom said with a smile.
Coming off a 14-strikeout performance in a 3-0 loss to Miami, deGrom became just the ninth pitcher to strike out as many as nine in a row.
"The fastball was the best weapon for him," Mets manager Luis Rojas said. "It's special. You don't see that often. You talk about Jake getting better every year and he goes out there, and we talked about the challenge of the weather, so it's a little bit of a different start. He makes an adjustment and does something special."
The streak ended in the fifth inning, when the Rockies took a 3-1 lead with three unearned runs, but the Mets rallied to win a series opener delayed a day by snow when pinch-hitter Jonathan Villar hit a tying double off Daniel Bard (0-1) in the seventh inning and Dominic Smith had a sacrifice fly.
Pete Alonso had homered in the sixth to pull the Mets within a run.
By winning the opener of a doubleheader of seven-inning games under coronavirus protocols, the Mets extended a winning streak to four for the first time since 2019.
DeGrom (1-0) allowed three unearned runs and three hits in six innings and walked one, lowering his ERA to 0.45.
He started the streak with a called third strike against Josh Fuentes for the first out of the second inning, then got Sam Hillard and Dom Nunez swinging.