Last time on the mound, Mets starter Christian Scott threw five scoreless innings in a win over the Kansas City Royals, but interim manager Andy Green wanted to see more from the 27-year-old despite the results.
Scott said he didn’t have his best stuff, and Green challenged him to “get better” and reach “another level” that he believes is there in the right-hander.
Thursday night in Philadelphia, Scott answered that challenge.
He threw 5.2 scoreless innings in a 4-1 win over the Phillies, allowing just three hits and striking out seven. After the win, Scott explained how Green’s comments motivated him for this next start.
“Yeah, I love when he challenges me,” Scott said. “I don’t want to hear how good I did; I want to hear what I need to improve on. It’s easy to come in here and say I did a great job when me and him both know I didn’t really pitch up to my capabilities that day, even though the results showed that. Sometimes the results kind of lie.
“I thought it was a good kick in the ass, little bit. Being able to light that fire under me. I needed that for that day. You know, especially coming off his ear, I know I can pitch better; that was a good time for him to bring that up.”
Green was proud of how Scott responded with “outstanding effort” on Thursday, and noted that he would’ve kept Scott in the game longer if this wasn’t their first game back from the All-Star break.
“I thought his mix was really good. His fastball was alive early, he was beating really good hitters with it,” Green said. “I think second time through he mixed really well, got to the cutter and the sweeper a little bit more. Outstanding effort from him.
“I think I challenged him last game to really end innings and not let them drag on, and he did a phenomenal job of that. Any other day, he’s probably going to be asked to run through the middle of the order again, but with a day off tomorrow coming off the All-Star break, we’re about as fresh in the bullpen as we could be. Having Brooks [Raley] available in there to get the couple of lefties was great.”
Scott threw his fastball 27 times against the Phillies, topping out at 97.7 mph, and got four strikeouts with the pitch. Overall, he threw 79 pitches for a total of 56 strikes, and like Green noticed, said everything was working well on the mound.
“I thought I did a good job attacking the strike zone early,” Scott said. “Just stayed on the attack pretty much the whole game, all my pitches were working in the strike zone today. Thought I did a good job getting ahead, just getting through at-bats pretty quickly today.”
Looking ahead, Scott hopes to be able to pitch deeper into the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings, but acknowledges it’s “part of the learning process.” For now, he’s happy with putting the Mets in a position to win the game.
“Just giving the team a chance to win, honestly, that was the biggest part of that I took from today,” Scott said. “I thought the offense did a good job battling and then finally getting to the bullpen and putting some runs together. Yeah, I just keep my team in it for the most part, that’s what my job is, so feel like I did a good job of that.”
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