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There are few surer things in baseball right now than David Peterson mowing down the Washington Nationals.
Stick the Mets left-hander on the mound against this particular lineup, and you probably know the results before he ever throws a pitch. Just let Peterson throw his tantalizing assortment of 90 mph sinkers, breaking balls and changeups and watch as the Nats continue to flail away, making precious little solid contact.
It’s happened before. It happened again tonight. And unless the Nationals’ position players actually do something to adjust, it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen again the next time they meet.
Tonight’s 8-1 loss might have stood out if not for the fact it was a near-repeat of Peterson’s last start against the Nats, when he tossed a six-hit shutout at Citi Field.
They didn’t score off him the time before that, either. All told, Peterson had thrown 25 consecutive scoreless innings against the Nationals before they finally broke through in the bottom of the eighth tonight. And the dominance isn’t confined to this current inexperienced lineup. During a career that began in 2020, Peterson has now faced the Nats a total of 14 times (11 of them starts). The Mets’ record in those games: 13-1.
"He's got our number, I guess," interim manager Miguel Cairo said. "We've got to do something about it."
Cairo tried to assemble a lineup loaded with right-handed hitters to combat Peterson tonight, with James Wood and CJ Abrams the lone lefties in there. It mattered not one bit. For five-plus innings, the only hitter to reach base against him was newly promoted first baseman Andrés Chaparro, who singled and doubled. His teammates did next-to-nothing to support him.
The Nationals knew what Peterson was trying to do against them. Why was it so difficult to adjust?
"In my at-bats, he did three different sequences," said second baseman Paul DeJong, who struck out all three times. "He was using all his pitches. He was throwing strike-to-ball pitches. Even his misses, like a changeup off the plate, he set up in my last at-bat for a curveball backdoor. He really just executed well, had a good mix and we were just on our heels the whole time, not sure what our approach was."
With a real shot at a second straight shutout against this opponent, Peterson finally succumbed in the bottom of the eighth. Dylan Crews, after grounding out to short in each of his first two at-bats, managed to drive a triple off the wall in right-center, with Chaparro drawing the night’s first walk right behind him. Brady House then grounded into a double play to bring Crews home, the scoreless streak at last coming to an end, albeit without the batter getting credit for an RBI.
"When you've got a pitcher like that, that you know is a ground ball pitcher, you have to make sure the ball is up. And you've got to stay through it," Cairo said. "You cannot be just trying to pull. You've got to stay to the middle of the field, right-center if you're a right-handed hitter."
His pitch count at 96 at that point, Peterson was pulled after the eighth. The Nationals avoided what would have been a major league-worst fourth shutout by an opposing starter this season.
"It seems like he's definitely got something figured out against us," DeJong said. "We'll have to let this one marinate, and when we see him again hopefully in New York (in September) we'll have a better approach."
With zero run support tonight, it didn’t really matter how well Jake Irvin fared against the Mets. But it only added to the sting of this lackluster loss that Irvin once again struggled and kept his summer slide careening in the wrong direction.
There was at least some optimism early tonight when Irvin navigated his way through a scoreless top of the first. That seemingly mundane achievement hasn’t been mundane this year for the right-hander, who entered with the majors’ worst first-inning ERA at 9.95. Not that he dominated the opening frame, with the same number of balls as strikes (seven) and some bad misses to his glove side.
The second inning featured another zero, but with a pair of walks included that drove Irvin’s pitch count up to 36 and set him up to have to face the top of the Mets lineup a second time when he returned for the top of the third. And that’s when things fell apart.
Over a span of six batters, Irvin surrendered four hits and another walk. The inning included two doubles, including Jeff McNeil’s two-run line drive into the right field corner. And then it included the big blast: a two-run homer by Mark Vientos on a hanging 0-2 curveball that left the Nats starter fuming on the mound as he contemplated the 5-spot he just suffered in the inning.
"I think he was a little off-balance with the sinkers that we had been throwing," Irvin said. "If I could go back in a perfect world, I don't throw a curveball. But at the end of the day, if you throw it right down the middle, it gives the guy a really good chance to hit it."
Irvin’s bottom-line results over the rest of his night were solid. He allowed only one other run, via Brett Baty’s leadoff homer in the sixth. But he never really looked sharp, missing badly on plenty of pitches, with a high variance of velocities on his various offerings. His fastball topped out at 94.7 mph but bottomed out at 89.8 mph, which was actually .1 mph slower than one of the three changeups he threw.
There was also a pair of confrontations with Nester Ceja during the top of the fifth after the plate umpire awarded an automatic ball for what he appeared to believe was a quick-pitch violation on Irvin’s part. Cairo had to come out of the dugout each time to make sure his pitcher didn’t say anything to get himself ejected. Irvin placed the blame on Vientos, who he said looked down at the plate after initially making eye contact with the pitcher, which is supposed to represent the green light to begin his delivery.
"I had two timer violations against the same hitter, and if you watch tomorrow, I'm sure it's going to be the same thing," he said. "He looks up. I can see his eyes. And that means I can come set. And then he looks back down while I'm coming set. So I guess it's on me. They said I have to wait until 9 seconds (on the pitch clock). If he looks back down before that 9 seconds, then he has a right to do that. Taking advantage of the pitch clock is how I look at that."
Irvin managed to remain in the game and at least churn out six innings of six-run ball. But his ERA now stands at a gaudy 5.30, with time running out to salvage a season that has reached new levels of frustration.
"I'd say it's pretty high," he said. "But at the end of the day, I'm going to come to work tomorrow, grind like crazy and do my best to fix it."
