In Your Ear

One night after ostensibly stealing a victory from the Braves, the Mets picked up on Tuesday night with a full-scale bombardment of the Barves and their hotshot pitcher Julio Teheran, ringing out 18 hits—11 off Teheran—and scoring in 6 of their 8 times at bat for the game to back Jacob deGrom's 2nd Major League win and the Mets 4,000th Major League win, a resounding 8-1 victory.

Whereas on Monday night, the Mets really had to show their insides in order to win the game, on Tuesday, they came out firing, stepped on the Braves throats and didn't let go until the game was well in control. Curtis Granderson set the tone by hitting Teheran's second pitch of the game off the facing of the Pepsi Porch, and one inning later, a barrage of 2-out hits started out by deGrom and punctuated by a pair of ringing RBI hits from Daniel Murphy and David Wright  had Teheran not only dazed, but indignant, as though the Mets had clearly gotten in his head. It didn't improve for him; 9th place hitter Eric Young Jr drove home yet another run in the 3rd, and after allowing hits to every Met starter, Teheran was gone in the 4th, a rare early night for Atlanta's de facto ace (you know, since God's gift to pitching Kris Medlen is out for the season).

Meanwhile, deGrom set out very neatly shoving the bats up the Barves' asses over his 7 sterling innings of work. deGrom hasn't pitched as badly as his record—1-5 coming into the night—and finally he proved it against a team that everyone loves to brown-nose. Throwing his won-loss record out the window, deGrom has pitched pretty damn well for a Rookie that's made all of 11 Major League starts. Though he doesn't have the hype of Zack Wheeler or the dashing good looks of Matt Harvey, it's been the muppet-like deGrom that's emerged as one of those "real deal" type-guys, sort of a modern-day Dillon Gee, who isn't going to get a ton of ink, and he isn't going to be the first name that rolls off your tongue, but he's going to be the guy that seems to pitch effectively and get the job done every time he needs to do so. That's basically what he's demonstrated so far in his Major League career, even if the results haven't always indicated as such. It's not his fault that the 8 runs he was backed with tonight were more or less the sum total of the runs scored for him in his first 10 starts combined. If you pitch well, you'll eventually win games and the more games you win, the more you'll get noticed. It may not happen for deGrom right away, but once he starts working up those Ws, people will begin to appreciate what he brings to the table.