After coming over in the January 2021 trade with Francisco Lindor, Carlos Carrasco was banged up in 2021, and struggled to capture his underrated dominance with the now Cleveland Guardians, during his transition to the Big Apple. Here he is three starts into the year, and he’s already looking like he did back in 2020 […]
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After coming over in the January 2021 trade with Francisco Lindor, Carlos Carrasco was banged up in 2021, and struggled to capture his underrated dominance with the now Cleveland Guardians, during his transition to the Big Apple. Here he is three starts into the year, and he’s already looking like he did back in 2020 with Cleveland. In three starts so far, Carrasco is now 1-0 with a 1.47 ERA, 0.60 WHIP, with 20 strikeouts in 18 and a 1/3 innings pitched.
Carrasco took the hill in Queens to finish off a four-game series against the San Francisco Giants, and Mike Yastrzemski started off the inning and was able to reach out a bunt single to make things a little dicey early on. That was quickly put to rest as Carrasco was able to get two strikeouts to Brandon Belt and Darin Ruf.
The second inning on the other hand was Carrasco’s worst inning of the afternoon as he hit Brandon Crawford to begin the inning, Thairo Estrada knocked in Crawford on an RBI-single, but Carrasco was able to get into a groove to get three outs following the game tying hit by Estrada.
Carrasco managed to have four straight 1-2-3 innings in the third-sixth innings, with only six pitches in the third inning, which saw the right hander get three more strikeouts before being taken out of the eighth inning after a Yastrzemski home run to make it a 5-2 Mets lead with two-outs in the eighth inning.
When Carrasco was taken out of the game the Citi Field crowd gave him a standing ovation. “It was really good, we love the fans and we love to play here,” Carrasco Said.
Carrasco finished his stellar outing going 7 2/3 innings pitched, walked no batters, struck out seven, and gave up two earned runs off of just four hits. Carrasco’s ERA might’ve rose from 0.84 to 1.47, but it was definitely his best outing in a Mets uniform, and there was even a moment in the game where he managed to retire 18-straight batters.
Mets manager Buck Showalter has been impressed with how the veteran Carrasco has pitched in 2022. “The big thing is he’s healthy. We all know what he’s capable of when he’s healthy,” Showalter said.
Carrasco averaged 93 mph on his fastball, but his best pitch on Thursday was his slider. The breaking ball produced a 50% whiff rate and also had five called strikes on the slider as well. The changeup for Carrasco continues to be a weapon too, opponents have just a .050 batting average against it.
The 35-year-old starts Friday tied for fifth in the majors with his 0.8 WAR from Baseball Reference.
It’s really great to see Carrasco, a cancer survivor, flourishing with a team with playoff aspirations, and the Mets are going to need more outings like this from the veteran as the timetables on both Jacob deGrom and Taijuan Walker remain to be seen. The combination of Carrasco, Max Scherzer, Chris Bassitt, Tylor Megill, and David Peterson have been terrific for the Mets. The Mets’ starters lead the majors with a 2.10 in the early going.
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