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If you only looked at the box score, you might have missed the most important thing the Mets did offensively in Saturday’s win.
Sure, catcher Luis Torrens went 0-for-4.
Sure, he struck out three times in four at-bats.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza saw something completely different. After Saturday’s 6-3 win against the Yankees, he explained why Torrens’ “unproductive” at-bat might have been the moment the game shifted.
“It’s something that when you look at the box score, it’s 0-4,” Mendoza said after the game. “But the fact that, as a team we kind of drove the pitch count up, but that Torrens at-bat was — I don’t know, I mean, you look at what happened next and we went from two out, nobody on... to being able to, not only get (Carlos Rodón’s) pitch count up, but being able to score on a wild pitch.”
The moment happened in the bottom of the third inning. Torrens stepped to the plate with one out and the Mets trailing 1-0.
To that point, Rodón looked nearly unhittable. He’d thrown just 39 pitches through 2 1/3 and recorded four strikeouts. Torrens wound up being Rodón’s fifth strikeout victim, but he made him work for it, making the left-hander throw 10 pitches to do it.
Torrens’ at-bat set the tone.
Rodón needed 33 more pitches to record the final two outs of the inning, with two runs scoring on a double, a wild pitch and an error along the way.
Grinding at-bats aren’t glamorous.
The famous old moniker doesn’t read “chicks dig the long count.” But they do serve as a way to wear down opposing starting pitchers.
And after Torrens’ at-bat, the Mets continued to grind.
Nowhere was that more evident than at the top of the order, where leadoff hitter Carson Benge saw 26 pitches across his four at-bats.
“That’s what (Benge’s) all about. And when we’re doing that, you know, we want to put ourselves in situations where we want to be able to score runs,” Mendoza said. “And it starts at the top with Carson. I feel like he’s settling nicely at the top.”
The Mets are grinding. They’re working counts, passing the baton and trusting each other.
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