Making his second regular season start as a Met, Freddy Peralta was very sharp on Wednesday afternoon.
With the series on the line, the right-hander delivered the performance the team was looking for, but his offense couldn’t pick him up and they ended up being walked off by the Cardinals in extras.
Still, it was an encouraging performance from the Mets’ new ace.
Peralta picked up Francisco Lindor after he forgot how many outs there were in the bottom of the first, quickly striking out the next batter to end the inning with just five extra pitches thrown.
He then settled into a groove and retired the next nine batters he faced, picking up three more strikeouts along the way, before allowing the first two to reach with a walk and single in the bottom of the fifth.
The righty was able to work his way out of danger, though, rolling a pair of groundouts and picking up a big strikeout with some help from an ABS challenge.
He put the first two on again in the sixth, but this time recorded just one out before being pulled from the ballgame.
Peralta was visibly frustrated as he wanted to continue on as Carlos Mendoza walked out and signaled towards the bullpen, but after taking some time, he agreed with the decision afterwards.
“I like to compete and I always want to stay in the game,” he said. “I knew that part of the situation I wasn’t able to finish was because I gave up a base hit to the leadoff guy — at the end of the day, I think it was smart by Mendy.”
Huascar Brazoban entered and allowed a two out RBI knock to Nolan Gorman, but limited the damage to just that to keep the game evened at one heading to the top of the seventh.
New York, of course, ended up falling in the 11th but it was a strong effort put forward by Peralta with just the one run allowed on three hits and two walks while striking out seven in 5.1 innings.
“He was really good,” Mendoza said. “The changeup usage was pretty impressive, a pitch that he didn’t use until like the fourth in his first outing, but today we went right to it especially with the lefties they had in the lineup.
“There was also life on the fastball, the way he mixed — he wasn’t afraid double-up on the changeup and triple-up when he needed to, he got swing-and-misses which made the fastball play a lot more, overall he was just really solid.”
Peralta is lined up to toe the rubber again in Tuesday’s series opener with the Diamondbacks.
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