There needs to be a name for yesterday.
As long as Major League Baseball adheres to its current postseason format, it appears, we will have at least one day of every year with four guaranteed postseason baseball games (weather permitting, of course). Because the schedule dictates that this day now always occurs on a Friday, I propose that it be called — wait for it — “Four-Game Friday.”
Is that a clever name? No. But you will never have to explain to anybody what it means. And in the history of Four-Game Friday going back all the way to 2013, 75% of teams that won their games on this day went on to win their series, a figure that is 100% statistically meaningless.
Nonetheless, last year’s version of the event saw the Cardinals rally for eight runs to come back against Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers and win, 10-9, a comeback 7-6 win for the Orioles over the Tigers, an 11-inning Royals victory over the Angels, and a 3-2 Giants win over the Nationals that included this Bryce Harper home run:
That was a pretty cool day. And this Friday’s games included a 14-inning, come-from-behind Rangers win in Toronto, a Royals comeback over the Astros in Kansas City, and an excellent pitching performance from John Lackey to mow down the Cubs.
But Friday’s nightcap featured the slate’s marquee pitching matchup, with Clayton Kershaw on the mound for the Dodgers trying to put to bed his reputation for shaky postseason performances — one he fostered on the last Four-Game Friday — against 27-year-old righty Jacob deGrom, the ace of the Mets’ vaunted young pitching rotation.
Jacob deGrom (PHOTO: Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports Images)
The frontline starters matched their billing for the first six innings, with one of Kershaw’s rare early mistakes giving the Mets a 1-0 lead on a Daniel Murphy homer. But Kershaw walked three batters around two outs in the seventh before leaving in favor of reliever Pedro Baez. And after David Wright’s single off Baez gave the Mets a three-run cushion, deGrom stayed in the game to pitch the seventh with 101 pitches already on his ledger. He retired the Dodgers in order and finished the inning with his 12th and 13th strikeouts. deGrom’s final line: Seven innings, five hits, no runs, one walk, 13 Ks.
deGrom finished fourth in the National League in ERA this season, trailing only Zack Greinke, Jake Arrieta and Kershaw. He’s an All-Star and the reigning NL Rookie of the Year and he pitches in a huge market, so deGrom is hardly a well-kept secret around baseball at this point.
But his performance Friday suggests he’s primed for the leap to superstardom: He can blow pitches by batters with fastballs in the high 90s or fool them with secondary pitches nearly as pretty as his hair. And both because he’s so dominant and because he works quickly on the mound, deGrom is an extremely entertaining pitcher to watch.
His ascendence, not coincidentally, comes at what appears to be the culmination of a long rebuild that spanned some bleak times for the organization. And what deGrom pulled off Friday in outdueling Kershaw seems to signify even better days ahead for a Mets team now stocked with pitching talent.
