Last night, Jacob deGrom looked more like the Jacob deGrom we had been accustomed to seeing after his rough outing at Yankee Stadium last Friday.
He had retired the first nine batters to face him to open Thursday’s game, and was staked to an early 2-0 lead. He was locating his fastball down in the zone, pounding the strike zone and inducing insignificant contact from the Washington hitters.
Then came the fourth inning.
DeGrom allowed a leadoff walk to Denard Span, but then induced what looked like a routine 6-4-3 double play which should have resulted in a two out, nobody on situation for Jayson Werth,
But it wasn’t.
Wilmer Flores could not field the routine groundball. In his haste to try and flip the ball to second, he dropped the ball and everybody was safe instead.
“It is what your pitcher is looking for and you have to be able to execute,” Flores said after the game.
DeGrom clearly became frustrated. His body language showed it, and he admitted it affected his performance after the game.
“I thought I had good stuff and there were a couple of times, the walks and stuff, that I got frustrated,” deGrom explained.
The Nationals took advantage of their gift and parlayed it into three runs they otherwise should not have scored.
“I’ve got to do a better job of picking [Flores] up on that,” deGrom said. “Normally, I do a pretty good job of that. I think I was doing too much. I think I was overthrowing.”
Yes, deGrom probably should have remained focused rather than get frustrated out there. He clearly became disrupted, started getting fastball happy and began missing his location pretty badly. He usually remains composed out there, but yesterday the distraction was obvious.
At the same time, it’s hard for any pitcher to manage extra outs at this level. In the fourth inning in particular, the error effectively gave the Nationals two extra outs to work with, which forced deGrom to throw more pitches and throw those pitches under duress. Is that deGrom’s fault? Its noble for him to take responsibility for the inning, but the fact of the matter is if Flores makes that routine play, the game is completely different from that point forward. It was the difference between three runs coming across and no runs coming across, and the clear cut difference in the game for deGrom.
The poor defense up the middle is a topic that’s been beaten to death, but unfortunately something that keeps rearing it’s ugly head, as it’s costing the team runs and costing the team games.
It doesn’t really matter who is pitching or how well he is performing if the team behind him cannot convert routine plays. It’s arguably cost them four games alone in the last week – it just cannot continue.
Just Mets 