David Peterson Rebounds After Rough Pair of Starts

After two rough outings in which he failed to complete five innings and allowed exactly five runs each time, southpaw David Peterson bounced back with 6 2/3 strong innings while yielding just one earned run against the Milwaukee Brewers.

It was a day the Mets desperately needed innings from their starter. On Wednesday, New York had played a twin bill and burned through seven different relievers.

“It’s huge,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of the length Peterson provided. “You know that he’s going to get you through six…he’s getting ahead, he’s getting weak contact…especially on a day like today…everybody in the ballpark knew how thin we were back there.”

Peterson knows the toll the entirety of the Mets’ bullpen has taken this season and acknowledged that he’s been able to help pick up the slack.

“Every team’s gonna go through it. We’ve kind of been battling it right now and it sucks. We wish those guys the best. But at the same time, we’ve got a job to do,” he said postgame.

It’s no secret that the Mets have leaned on a revolving door of bullpen arms this year. They’ve already used over 30 pitchers this year, and nearly half of them haven’t eclipsed the 10-inning mark. Peterson’s ability to consistently give the Mets six, sometimes even seven innings matters a lot, especially in this new era of baseball.

On Thursday, the 29-year-old also became the first starter on the team to complete a six-inning outing since he last did so on June 17 against the Atlanta Braves.

Much of that durability comes from his ability to induce ground balls at a high rate. Earlier this season, Peterson was pitching into the eighth inning with just 82 pitches, simply by getting tons of early weak contact on the ground.

Former Mets pitching stalwart and current analyst Ron Darling once said that becoming elite isn’t just about raw talent, though that obviously helps. It’s about staying composed with runners on, pitching out of jams and not folding when the game gets to its climax.

Peterson and Tylor Megill have at times been lumped together as the Mets’ middle-of-the-rotation question marks throughout the early 2020s. While Megill offers potentially better raw stuff and maybe even a higher ceiling, Peterson has shown the qualities Darling says define a legitimate big league pitcher: the ability to induce soft contact, stay composed under pressure and pitch out of trouble before things get ugly.

Right now, Peterson is exactly what the Mets need – a calm, reliable presence who can take the ball deep into games and shoulder the burden of innings when others can’t.

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