Zac Thornton continued his excellent start to his career with the Mets on Monday night against the Atlanta Braves, allowing three earned runs in 6.1 innings of an eventual 14-3 win for New York.
The left-hander is now 2-1 with a 2.43 ERA (0.91 WHIP) in five starts and 29.2 innings pitched this season, and although he’s a top pitching prospect in the Mets organization and just 24 years old, Thornton’s repertoire doesn’t include the typical blistering fastball and wicked secondary pitch that most young pitching prospects have.
Instead, Thornton relies mostly on a cutter that averages around 87 mph and his two-seam fastball that sits between 89-92 mph while mixing in a variety of other pitches, none of which get above 94 mph on a consistent basis.
Interim manager Andy Green admitted that it’s not “the traditional way” that most front-line starters attack hitters in this day and age of high velocity and spin rate, but the results so far speak for themselves.
“It’s good stuff,” Green said about Thornton’s assortment of pitches. “We live in a world where we don’t define stuff as good unless it’s 95+ anymore and that’s unfortunate because the cutter really is tough for righties to see and react to and the more you have to think about pitches coming in on your hands, the more you’re gonna pull off of everything else that works away from you.
“So it’s not the traditional way that star pitchers get people out right now, but it’s real, it’s not easy and so it gets a lot of soft contact off handles and gets a lot of ground balls. And occasionally somebody barrels him up, but he gets right back at it.”
So far, that’s been Thornton’s approach. Regardless of what happened in a previous at-bat, he doesn’t let it affect his next one.
For example, in the fourth inning on Monday night Thornton allowed a game-tying, two-run home run to Ozzie Albies after the Mets had taken the lead a half-inning prior. Rather than allow the inning to spiral, the lefty calmly went back to work and even after a single following the homer, Thornton ended the inning without further damage thanks to some weak contact and a double play.
Thornton didn’t allow another run beyond that point and New York went on to re-take the lead in the sixth inning thanks to its starter’s resilience which allowed the team to remain in the fight and in the end give Thornton the win.
In fact, the way Thornton sees it, it doesn’t matter where he’s pitching or what the situation is, he’s coming after hitters the same way he always has.
“It’s the same thing if I was getting starts at Triple-A or Double-A,” he said. “I’m a competitor, I’m gonna go out and beat whoever is on the other side of that field.”
That attitude from the lefty comes as no surprise to Green who has been around Thornton quite a bit from his role as senior vice president of player development prior to becoming the interim manager.
“That’s who he is. Sometimes guys barrel you up and I don’t think he allows it to affect his next pitch which is not an easy thing to do as a rookie on a big league mound for the first time,” Green said. “[The Braves have] a good lineup. They had some good early swings. I thought he got to punchouts a little better in some bigger situations that were nice to see, but more than anything he got a couple of double play balls, continued to pitch to contact, continued to fill up the zone and even after the two-run homer to tie the game, he got right back out there and kept going.”
Green added: “It doesn’t surprise me though, I expect him to attack that way.”
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