Carlos Carrasco shuts down Giants as Mets cruise to win
With big ball or small ball, with seemingly any member of what has been the best rotation in baseball and against opponents of all skill levels, the Mets just keep winning.
The Mets used excellent pitching, a pair of home runs, a rarely seen hit-and-run and timely hitting to take a series from the reigning NL West champions on Thursday. The matinee final was 6-2 over the Giants at Citi Field in front of 28,760. For the Mets, that’s four series played, four series won to begin the season.
The Mets (10-4) took three of four against a Giants club that totaled 107 victories last season and had entered Queens tied atop their division. In the first two weeks of the season, the Mets have beaten up on both the ants and actual Giants they have faced and head to Arizona to see the worst the NL West has to offer.
On Thursday, Carlos Carrasco looked like the former Cleveland standout who received Cy Young votes, Francisco Lindor looked like the former Cleveland standout who received MVP votes and the Mets scored in all kinds of ways to welcome Buck Showalter back in style from his one-game absence.
“It’s completely different this year,” said Carrasco, who had October surgery to remove a bone fragment from his right elbow. “To have those four pitches [four-seamer, two-seamer, slider and sinker] for strikes, it’s even better.”
Carrasco actually inflated his ERA to 1.47 through 7 ²/₃ dominant innings in which he gave up two runs. In his longest outing as a Met, he allowed no walks and just four hits — which included a game-opening, against-the-shift bunt from Mike Yastrzemski — and tamed a Giants offense that had attacked Tylor Megill and Chris Bassitt early in counts the previous two days.
Carrasco said he and catcher Tomas Nido went through the videos and watched how the San Francisco offense ambushed early in the counts, so there were no early offerings just meant to record strikes.
“We did the opposite [as Megill and Bassitt] today,” said Carrasco, who is part of a rotation that carries a majors-best 2.10 ERA even without Jacob deGrom.
Carrasco retired 18 straight Giants until Mauricio Dubon reached on a seventh-inning error by shortstop Luis Guillorme. But a batter later, Carrasco erased the runner with a double play.
The only blips from Carrasco were a weakly hit RBI single from former Yankee Thairo Estrada in the second inning and a home run to Yastrzemski in the eighth, which would be Carrasco’s final pitch. He walked off the mound to a standing ovation.
“I think he’s in a good spot physically, mentally and emotionally,” said Showalter, who had missed Wednesday’s game to undergo a medical procedure.
The Mets’ offense supported Carrasco, tagging Anthony DeSclafani for five runs in five innings, getting to the New Jersey native in each of the first three innings in which they built a 5-1 lead that would never be threatened.
Lindor led the way with three hits, including a first-inning home run into the upper deck in right field that was his fourth of the season. After a rough start to his 2021 season that all but buried him, he has resembled the superstar the Mets believed they were trading for and has multi-hit games in three of his past four. Since April 15, he’s 10-for-28 (.357) with three dingers.
Surely helping is the fact this year’s crop of new Mets — including Eduardo Escobar, who launched his first homer as a Met, and Mark Canha, who contributed a two-out, two-run single — have lengthened the lineup.
“We’re the New York Mets,” said Lindor, who DH’ed and gave his legs a break. “We got a good team.”
They can score with the long ball and the short ball. Guillorme drag-bunted for a hit and was part of a second-inning hit-and-run that was executed flawlessly, knocking a single where shortstop Brandon Crawford had been. Nido’s sacrifice fly then gave the Mets an early two-run lead.
“It’s good that our players see there’s another way to score a run,” said Showalter, who is managing the first team in MLB to double-digit wins. “We did it in a lot of different ways today, and we needed every one of them.”
On this, the Mets manager was incorrect. With Carrasco pitching like the best fourth starter in baseball and the bullpen — Joely Rodriguez and Edwin Diaz finished it off — running the Mets relievers’ streak to 17 consecutive scoreless innings, their offense was far more generous than it needed to be.
