NEW YORK — Forget the hubbub when the benches emptied in the eighth inning after Colorado’s Ian Desmond was drilled in the back by reliever Drew Gagnon.
The real story of Friday night’s game at Citi Field was this: Rockies right-hander Antonio Senzatela outpitched 2018 National League Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom, setting up Colorado’s 5-1 victory over the Mets for its 10th victory in its past 12 games.
“Before the game, when I was warming up, I looked on the other side and saw it was deGrom, and I felt like I had to throw a good game to give us a chance to win,” said Senzatela, who became the first Rockies pitcher since Christian Bergman in 2014 to work six or more innings with no strikeouts.
OK, back to the brouhaha, for a moment.
Colorado’s David Dahl, now batting .338, crushed a two-run home run off Gagnon into the second deck in left field. Two batters later, Daniel Murphy, the ex-Met, hit a solo shot off Gagnon. With that, Gagnon hit Desmond with a 91.5 mph fastball on a 2-1 count. It certainly looked like an intentional beaning, and Desmond and Gagnon exchanged unpleasantries. The benches, and bullpens emptied, but no punches were thrown and Gagnon was not ejected, although a warning was issued.
“We determined that we did not think the pitch was intentional,” crew chief Mike Winters said. “And then, given the situation, when everybody’s milling around like that, it’s usually the best move to put in a warning. We’re stuck. We can’t just do nothing there. We have to tell them at least we’re putting in warnings there.”
Desmond said there was much ado about nothing.
“(Gagnon) said it wasn’t intentional, and at that point it was kind of over,” Desmond said. “I don’t think there was any jawing. He hit me and I said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said it wasn’t on purpose and at that point I just put my head down and kind of started walking up the line.
“(But) it was two terrible pitches, back to back. Whether it was on purpose or not, those were terrible pitches. But, whatever, it’s water under the bridge. ‘Senza’ pitched a good game and we needed that.”
Asked if Gagnon threw intentionally at Desmond, Bud Black replied, “I’m not sure. I don’t know this fella.”
Senzatela, who has provided Colorado’s rotation with much-needed stability, pitched six innings of four-hit baseball. His only major mistake was a middle-of-the-plate fastball that Michael Conforto rocketed off the second-deck facade in the sixth inning.
Senzatela can’t match deGrom’s firepower, but he has 2.00 ERA over his past three starts.
Prior to the game, Black said the Rockies had to take “tough, smart at-bats” and make deGrom work hard. In other words, no freebies, no give-away at-bats.
The Rockies did exactly that, forcing deGrom to throw 112 pitches over six innings and fouling off 37 pitches. They rustled a run off deGrom in the third on a single by Tony Wolters and a double by Raimel Tapia, who nearly drove deGrom’s 2-2 slider over the center-field wall.
“Jake over there is no easy task, but I will say that I thought we were able to get his pitch count up a little bit,” Murphy said. “He had good stuff tonight, so this was a good win.”
Colorado extended its lead to 2-0 in the fourth on singles by Dahl, Murphy and Desmond, who changed up the game plan by ambushing deGrom’s first-pitch slider.
DeGrom’s line was certainly solid: two runs on six hits with 10 strikeouts and just one walk. But he needed a lot of pitches to get there and he didn’t dominate the Rockies as he has in the past. Entering the game, he was 3-0 with a 0.30 ERA over his last three starts vs. Colorado at Citi Field, having allowed a single run over 30 innings with 36 strikeouts and six walks over that stretch.
Senzatela worked like a savvy veteran in the fourth inning to keep the Mets off the scoreboard. He issued a one-out walk to Dominic Smith but induced Wilson Ramos to hit into an apparent double-play groundout to shortstop Trevor Story. But second baseman Brendan Rodgers whiffed on Story’s short throw to second base, and instead of being out of the inning, Senzatela faced two on and only one out. But the right-hander kept his cool, getting Todd Frazier to pop out to Murphy at first and pumped his fist when Amed Rosario lined out to Story. Crisis averted.
“There is a composure element that we are seeing, and there is an element where, when some pitches have to be made, he’s getting that out,” Black said. “That’s critical and it happened a couple of times tonight.”
