With deGrom Out, the Mets’ Rotation Has Picked Up the Slack

Tylor Megill got his no-hitter, after a fashion. After pitching the first five innings of a combined no-no in his previous start on April 29 against the Phillies — just the second no-hitter of any kind in the franchise’s 51-season history — the 26-year-old righty added another four consecutive hitless frames to his streak on Wednesday afternoon against the Braves before Adam Duvall’s fifth-inning single ended his streak. Megill and the Mets’ bullpen ended up faltering in the sixth inning, but the starter’s impressive run through the season’s first four weeks is a major reason why they own the National League’s best record thus far at 18–9 — all without the services of Jacob deGrom.

After a season in which deGrom didn’t throw a single competitive pitch in the second half due to what was eventually revealed to be a low-grade sprain of his ulnar collateral ligament, the Mets have been without his services so far due to a stress reaction in his right scapula. Last year’s loss of the two-time Cy Young winner played a significant part in sending the Mets’ season off the rails. They were 46–38 through July 7, the day of their ace’s final start, with a rotation ERA of 2.96, a FIP of 3.42, and a 4.5-game lead over the rest of the NL East field. From there, they went just 31–47 the rest of the way, with their starters pitching to a 4.93 ERA and 4.77 FIP, and finished 11.5 games out of first.

This year, it’s been a different story. Thanks in large part to Megill, free-agent addition Max Scherzer, trade acquisition Chris Bassitt, and a healthy Carlos Carrasco, Mets starters are currently ranked third in the NL in ERA (2.78), second in FIP (2.94), strikeout rate (26.8%), and strikeout-walk differential (20.2%), and first in innings (149) and WAR (3.2).

Though he was ultimately charged with three earned runs allowed in 5.1 innings after Adam Ottavino failed to bail him out of a bases-loaded jam, Megill was again impressive on Wednesday, as he’s been all season. He struck out a season-high nine batters, seven of them through a comparatively efficient four hitless innings, during which he used only 61 pitches; the only batters to reach during that span were Dansby Swanson in the third and Matt Olson in the fourth, both via walks. In doing so, he was the first Met to complete nine hitless innings since Matt Harvey on April 8 and 13, 2013, though deGrom did have a three-start stretch from June 11–21 of last season where he recorded 28 outs without yielding a hit.

Megill needed 22 pitches to get through a labor-intensive fifth inning, as Francisco Lindor committed an error on Travis d’Arnaud’s grounder before Duvall hit a clean single to left field. With two on and nobody out, he escaped on a Swanson fly ball and strikeouts of Guillermo Heredia and Ronald Acuña Jr. Even with that extra work, his 83 pitches through five was five fewer than he used during the combined no-hitter, during which he walked three and struck out five.

Megill’s afternoon ended after allowing three straight one-out singles. Ottavino, pitching for a third straight day due to the bullpen being thinned by the previous day’s doubleheader and the loss of Trevor May, arrived and promptly walked d’Arnaud with the bases loaded, served up a two-run double to Duvall, allowed two more runs via a wild pitch and a Swanson single, and then departed. By the time reliever Trevor Williams was done, what had been a scoreless game turned into a 7–0 deficit for the Mets, who ended up losing, 9–2, and splitting the four-game series with the Braves — New York’s first series out of eight this season it did not win outright.

Megill, who took his lumps as a rookie last year via a 4.52 ERA and 4.69 FIP in 89.2 innings, has dazzled from the outset of this season. Drawing the Opening Day start against the Nationals due to deGrom’s absence and Scherzer’s minor hamstring concern, he finished off the first hitter he faced, Cesar Hernandez, with a 99.1 mph four-seam fastball, 1.5 mph faster than any pitch he threw last season. That one might have been the product of adrenaline, as he has yet to top it, but his 95.7 mph average is up 1.1 mph from last year. The pitch is also moving a bit less horizontally (by 2.2 inches according to Statcast) and dropping a bit less (by one inch); with that, it’s moving away from what Kevin Goldstein called “the line of normality,” meaning that the pitch’s movement has become harder for hitters to predict:

Batters are making much softer contact against his fastball, and against his slider as well:

Megill’s changeup has not progressed to the same degree as his other two pitches, though as Jake Mailhot pointed out in an earlier analysis of his makeover, he’s distinguished its speed from that of his slider and now has pitches in three distinct velocity bands (96, 89, 86). He’s striking out 25.2% of hitters, has allowed just two homers in 33 innings so far, and has trimmed his barrel rate from 10% to 5.8%. His 2.49 FIP leads the rotation, and his 2.45 ERA is lower than everybody except sixth man David Peterson.

Elsewhere in the rotation, the 37-year-old Scherzer, who joined the team via a record-setting three-year, $140 million contract, has quickly settled in with his new team. He’s posted a 2.61 ERA and 3.01 FIP thus far, with his 35.9% strikeout rate and 28.2% strikeout-walk differential both among the majors’ top five. He’s also provided a fiery dugout presence on the days he’s not pitching, getting into it with the Cardinals during last week’s hostilities and getting ejected from Tuesday night’s game for arguing balls and strikes from the bench.

From earlier: Max Scherzer yelled back at the Cardinals' dugout after Tommy Edman was hit by Adam Ottavino

(via Bally Sports Midwest) pic.twitter.com/1UcQiAcKCK

— SNY (@SNYtv) April 27, 2022

Bassitt been everything the Mets could have hoped for when they traded for him in mid-March. The 33-year-old righty has lasted at least six innings in each of his five starts and allowed one run or fewer in three of them en route to a 2.61 ERA and 3.22 FIP. He’s been a master of generating soft contact, as his 84.2 mph average exit velocity is lower than all but three qualifiers.

One thing that stands out about Bassitt is that he’s doubled the usage of his slider relative to last year — or sliders, plural. Baseball Prospectus’s PITCHf/x leaderboard classifies over half of them as sweepers, with lower velocities, much more horizontal movement, and much more effectiveness in terms of the batted ball results:

Bassitt is using both pitches in the same game, adding to an already bewilderingly expansive arsenal that includes a four-seamer, sinker, cutter, curve, and changeup. The slider and sweeper form distinct clusters on his game charts; here’s the movement chart from his most recent start on Monday versus the Mets:

There’s certainly a whole lot more to be said about this, but back to my original point: Bassitt has backed off the usage of his sinker and changeup (from 35.7% last year to 27.5% this year for the former, and from 10.2% to 4.4% for the latter) and made room for the two sliders (from 10.1% to 20.1%). Even with batters getting their knocks against the true sliders, as a group, they hit .153 and slugged .278 against the pair of pitches last year and have gotten even worse this year, with a .129 AVG and .258 SLG, while ending plate appearances on the pitch about twice as often.

Carrasco has provided the biggest year-to-year improvement of the group. Last year, his first with the Mets after being acquired in the Lindor trade, was a disastrous one. A right hamstring strain suffered during spring training prevented him from debuting until July 30, and he was rocked for a 6.04 ERA and 5.22 FIP in 53.2 innings, serving up 2.01 homers per nine. The big deal for the 35-year-old righty so far is that his slider and changeup, which together account for about half of his pitches, are effective again. The slider was whacked for a .250 AVG/.481 SLG last year, but that’s down to .158/.158 so far, and similarly the results against the changeup have improved from .283/.434 to .143/.214. Thanks to that effectiveness, his home run rate is back down to 0.6 per nine, just behind Megill’s 0.55 for the rotation lead.

Beyond withstanding the loss of deGrom so far, the Mets have been able to work around the limited availability of Taijuan Walker, whose injury history is so extensive that last year’s 159 innings represented his highest total since 2015. The 29-year-old righty left his April 11 start after two perfect innings due to shoulder bursitis but returned on Saturday with five innings of two-hit shutout ball, pushing his pitch count to 73.

Peterson, who was cuffed for a 5.54 ERA and 4.78 FIP in 66.2 innings last year, relieved Walker when he left with his injury, took two turns in his place, and, after a detour to Triple-A Syracuse once Walker returned, also started the opener of Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Braves. Through 19 total innings, the 26-year-old lefty has put together a 1.89 ERA and 3.36 FIP. In the early going, his big improvement has been driven by his sliders; like Bassitt, he too is mixing in a sweeper, and apparently for the first time. Unlike Bassitt, his two pitches have almost no separation in velocity and less of a dramatic separation in movement, but together, they’ve been markedly more effective than last year’s more conventional offering:

While the Mets sent Peterson back to Syracuse, their plans for him aren’t entirely clear. So long as the team has five other healthy and effective starters, the team might prefer to keep him stretched out, but the loss of May for eight to 12 weeks due to a scapular stress reaction similar to that of deGrom opens up a substantial hole in the bullpen.

As for deGrom, he underwent an MRI on April 25 that showed “considerable healing” of his stress reaction and allowed him to begin a strengthening program. He’s due to undergo another MRI around the middle of the month, which should determine whether he’s ready to begin ramping up toward a return, which won’t come until June, at the earliest.

With the NL East’s other four teams all at .500 or worse, the Mets have opened up a 4.5-game lead on the Marlins and a six-game lead on the Phillies (11–14) and Braves (12–15). That they’ve done it while their ace has been on the shelf offers hope that this significantly revamped team — which, by the way, also leads the NL in wRC+ (118) — won’t be consigned to follow in the footsteps of its recent failures.