Were pitch counts not such a concern in modern-day baseball, Carlos Rodon may have broken a 114-year-old record. Instead, he has to settle for being second-best to Christy Mathewson. There is worse company to be in.
Rodon sparkled again in a five-inning start, his third-straight stellar outing of the season. Some early Giants run support and well-timed defensive work on the backend were the glue that sealed a 5-2 win.
The aforementioned record is the most strikeouts over the first three games of a season in Giants history. Mathewson, back in 1908 — when the Giants were still in New York, as they were again on Wednesday — struck out 30 batters over his first three starts.
With an eight-strikeout, three-hit outing on Wednesday night, Rodon came so very close to usurping Mathewson. Instead, he’ll have to settle for 29 strikeouts over his first three starts. He’ll have a 10-pitch at-bat to Eduardo Escobar to chew on in cutting his night short.
Rodon, though, has arguably been more impressive than Mathewson was at this stage through the season. “Arguably” represents the fact that there’s no one currently alive to vouch for Mathewson’s credentials.
But to get to 29 strikeouts, it took Rodon just 17 innings, compared to the 27 innings it took Mathewson to reach that 30-strikeout mark.
If Rodon was around in 1908, it’s fair to say he would have thrown more than the 95 pitches he delivered on Wednesday. He also would have been potentially viewed as some sort of wizard and broken the brains of everyone watching him play.
Even today, Rodon feels like he’s employing some magic. He has struggled to land his two off-speed pitches — his slider and curveball — effectively and yet is still confounding batters on either side of the plate with his upper-90s fastball. They know what’s coming and still can’t hit it.
He had a fairly comfortable lead to work with for the first time this season, thanks to some immediate run support.
The Giants hitters pounced on Chris Bassitt early, with a Joc Pederson double opening the tally. He waited on a hanging curveball over the middle, scoring Mike Yastrzemski and pushing Darin Ruf to third. An ensuing one-run single from Brandon Crawford scored Ruf and pushed Pederson to third.
Wilmer Flores continued the effort with some recompense against his old team, singling home Pederson and moving Crawford to third for the third run of the game.
Were it not for some cutesy decision-making, that scoring might have continued. But a Thairo Estrada safety squeeze backfired thanks to a bad bunt, as Crawford was gunned out at home by Pete Alonso.
The tally was amended in the second when Brandon Belt — previously 0-for-18 in his career on his birthday — cracked a home run into the second deck of Citi Field as he turned 34.
San Francisco concluded its tally in the fourth, when Yastrzemski — who showed signs of snapping out of his slump this series, going 2-for-5 on Wednesday — singled home Steven Duggar for the fifth run of the evening.
With Rodon out of the game in the sixth, it was left to the Giants bullpen. There were some shaky moments, but the group hung in to finish the game have a chance to break even on the series on Thursday.
It seemed like the Mets were starting to build towards something in the seventh, when a Starling Marte bloop single drove home New York’s first run of the game and put runners on first and third with a resurgent Francisco Lindor at the plate and two outs.
Marte, though, who has a green light to steal when he wants, got greedy. He attempted to steal, but Joey Bart threw a rope to Brandon Crawford at second base, nabbing Marte to end the inning.
Even with that wasted opportunity, New York made another go at it in the eighth against Tyler Rogers, who will consider himself awfully lucky and equally thankful to the former Met, Flores.
After retiring Lindor to open the eighth, Rogers allowed three-straight singles, cutting the lead to three runs. He notched a fielder’s choice groundout from Robinson Cano for the second out of the inning, but that left two Mets runners in scoring position.
What followed was that half-second gasp; that brief, silent moment on any line drive to find out whether it will land or not.
In Dominic Smith’s case, it did not. It found the mitt of a leaping Flores to retire the Mets, saving two immediate runs in the process.
Smith appeared understandably aggrieved to not have taken advantage of the 70.9 MPH slider that Rogers left hanging square over the heart of the plate.
There was further shakiness in the ninth, as Gabe Kapler opted to employ Jake McGee over Camilo Doval, who has looked unreliable as of late.
Ironically, it was McGee who struggled with control, walking leadoff batter James McCann and throwing an opening ball to the next batter before a talking-to from Bart. But, three batters later, after Marte barely beat out a double play, it was rendered moot as McGee struck out Lindor to end the game.
The Giants, now 8-4, will face New York again, with Thursday matinee starting at 10:10 PT.