Tylor Megill gives up three home runs, Mets get only four hits in loss to Atlanta
Tylor Megill of the Mets stands on the mound during the first inning against Atlanta at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Tylor Megill’s latest chance to stick in the majors began Saturday in the Mets’ 4-0 loss to Atlanta.
His chance will last until . . . well, that part is to be decided.
Unless they acquire a starting pitcher — or perhaps even if they do acquire a starting pitcher — the Mets plan to give Megill more run in the rotation, this time with new reason to believe it’ll work.
Called up to replace Christian Scott, who is sidelined with a sprained right elbow, Megill (2-5) returned to the roster with a middling outing: six innings-plus, five hits, four runs. Three of those runs came on solo homers by Marcell Ozuna and Matt Olson (back-to-back in the fourth) plus Eddie Rosario (in the seventh).
The feedback, like the line in the boxscore, was less than stellar.
“I want to say it wasn’t terrible,” Megill said after the Mets’ winning streak was snapped at five games.
Manager Carlos Mendoza, who highlighted the righthander’s first three perfect innings, said: “I thought he was fine.”
That was the second-longest of Megill’s nine outings this season. He entered with a 5.08 ERA, which was bad enough in late June to earn him a demotion to Triple-A Syracuse.
He pitched better there, as expected, but more importantly added a new pitch (a sinker) and adopted a not-exactly-groundbreaking new mindset (pitch to his strengths). In practice, Megill said, that means not overcomplicating things, leaning on his above-average fastball early in at-bats and moving to a wicked slider that he “finally” has a feel for again.
“I feel like I did that really well today,” he said. “Later in the game, I was getting behind with the sinker, but I managed to get back into counts. Overall, I don’t think it was terrible. I got into the seventh. I haven’t been in the seventh in a while. The majority [of his starts have been] five innings or even less. I feel like I did a good job.”
He said he learned the sinker from Syracuse pitching coach Grayson Crawford and pitching prospect Mike Vasil. He estimated that he threw about 15 of them in his return, though the pitch is new enough — never before thrown by him in the majors — that MLB’s pitch-tracking technology didn’t pick it up.
“I threw it a lot today, running it in to righthanders,” Megill said. “More grounders, but more so not allowing righthanders to get comfortable and lean over [to hit a pitch on the outer part of the plate] . . . The sinker equalizes that and [forces] them to stay pretty balanced. It opens up the outer half for me.”
Atlanta (55-48), meanwhile, turned to rookie righthander Spencer Schwellenbach to end a six-game losing streak and toggle back to the top of the National League wild-card standings, ahead of the Mets (55-49).
Schwellenbach (4-5), called up in May after making only two starts in Double-A, contributed by far his best outing in the majors: seven shutout innings with no walks and a career-high 11 strikeouts.
He held them to two hits, a double by Jeff McNeil in the second and a double by Pete Alonso in the fourth. Schwellenbach answered by retiring the next 10 batters to finish his outing.
“It was electric today,” Mendoza said of Schwellenbach, who saw an uptick in velocity. “It’s one thing when you’re going through the scouting report and putting together a game plan. But when you actually go out there and you’re seeing it live — he was at his best probably today.”
Brandon Nimmo said: “We didn’t hop on mistakes that he might have made. And then for the rest of the part, he made good pitches.”
The Mets totaled four hits, including a pair of singles in the bottom of the ninth that brought the potential tying run to the on-deck circle. But J.D. Martinez and Alonso struck out against Raisel Iglesias to end it for Atlanta.
The Mets suffered a scare — which appeared to be just that — in the bottom of the fourth when Nimmo fouled a pitch hard off the top of his left knee. He could barely walk at first and appeared to be in significant pain but stayed in the game.
“It gave me, like, a dead leg,” Nimmo said. “Kind of like when you hit the funny bone and you can’t move your arm for a little bit. It locked up on me. I just needed a few minutes to regather and be able to move it.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
