I tweeted this morning, "My gosh did you see the Mets' pitcher deGrom? That dude smoked the #Dodgers."
And now at the New York Times, "Straight Out of Hollywood: The New Guy Outpitches the Ace":
LOS ANGELES — Rawboned and gangling, he peered peek-a-boo over his glove, rocked and curled the ball behind his head. Sucking his lips hard against his teeth, he spun toward the plate, his right leg kicking up behind him, his hair a whirling dervish mop of locks.Keep reading.
All evening Friday, Jacob deGrom executed this delivery, tossing that most intriguing pitch: the seemingly effortless 97-98 miles per hour fastball. Some skidded sideways, others slithered downward. When for punctuation he tossed a couple of 3-2 changeups, the effect on the batters was almost unfair.
He completed seven innings, striking out 13 and walking just one. He gave up five hits. The Mets won, 3-1.
This was movie-set baseball playoffs on Friday evening. Fringed by palm trees and hills, Dodger Stadium sits against the backdrop of the San Gabriels, which turn red-hued as the sun sets. Add an autumnal heat wave, and the baseball crackled.
The Mets’ prospects did not look promising. The Dodgers started Clayton Kershaw, who is the arch deacon of National League pitchers. Zack Greinke will follow Saturday evening. Together they form the most fearsome pitching duo in the league.
The Mets’ young arms are formidable; their pitchers throw with microwave-dialed-high intensity. But Kershaw had been near unhittable of late. His style is sui generis. He stares samurai style into space somewhere over first base. Then he stretches his arms high over his head, like a cat in full stretch, and turns to the plate and unfolds a halting delivery. He has perhaps eight pitches, which arrive at speeds of between 97 and 74 miles per hour.
If you sit on his fastball, Kershaw’s changeup or sweeping curve can all but pull your shoulders out of sockets.
The Mets’ center fielder, Yoenis Cespedes, looking fashionable in his radioactive lime-green hitting sleeve, settled into the batter’s box in the first inning. Kershaw gave him a 96 m.p.h. hello. Two more strikes followed and Cespedes took a seat back in the dugout.
In his home stadium and throwing well, Kershaw should have been the story of the night.
But deGrom offered his own flip of that script. Friday’s matchup played as The Kid against the Ace; in fact, deGrom, 27, is just three months younger than Kershaw. His path to the majors had been as winding and tangled as Kershaw’s was straightforward.
DeGrom’s career plays as an improbable dice roll of chance, and a study in the tenuous nature of success for a pitcher. He played shortstop in college and only then turned to pitching. His statistics offered no hint of dominance.
The Mets drafted him in the ninth round. “We liked his attitude, and he was an athlete,” the Mets’ former general manager Omar Minaya said recently. “But you take a kid in the ninth round of the draft, you can’t claim you saw it all play out.”
The Mets’ staff is thick with golden boys. Their blond giant Noah Syndergaard got a signing bonus of $600,000 from the Toronto Blue Jays. Matt Harvey, the erstwhile Dark Knight, signed for a cool $2.5 million. (The Dodgers signed Kershaw to a bonus of $2.3 million.)
DeGrom signed for $95,000. The Mets packed him off to rural Tennessee and after six not-terribly-impressive starts he tore his ulnar collateral ligament. He embarked on a year of anonymous rehabilitation.
Somehow, improbably, his fastball gained a foot of hop. The kid who threw 93 now touches 98 m.p.h.. And he became a more polished pitcher; Johan Santana, who was rehabbing his shoulder, taught him to throw a changeup. He also broke a finger castrating a calf, which set him back. He finally made it to the majors last year, at age 26. Kershaw pitched his first season at age 20.
DeGrom throws with an insistent urgency, as if intent on wasting no more time...
And see Bill Plaschke, at LAT, "Dodgers' Don Mattingly makes right call to pull Clayton Kershaw."
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