NEW YORK — Jacob deGrom pitched his worst outing of the season and somehow there won’t be any panic about it in Queens because, news flash, he’s still the best pitcher in baseball.
A substandard deGrom outing is one that many major league pitchers wish they could accomplish more consistently. But Mets fans, spoiled with deGrom’s excellence every five days, expect perfection from their ace. So even though he permitted two earned runs against the Phillies — the most runs he’s given up in a start since Sept. 26, 2020 — for a bit of a disappointment, his quality start still generated M-V-P chants and kept the Mets in the game long enough for Kevin Pillar to rally the offense.
Pillar, who came off the bench in the seventh, crushed a game-tying pinch-hit home run, then later, with runners on first and second in the ninth, ripped an infield single to shortstop to load the bases with no outs for Luis Guillorme. Phillies reliever Hector Neris walked Guillorme to bring in the tying run, which gave the Mets three straight opportunities to walk off.
Michael Conforto played hero as he lined a sacrifice fly to center. Billy McKinney tagged third and easily slid home as the Mets won, 4-3, in walk-off fashion against the Phillies on Saturday afternoon at an electric Citi Field. Conforto was tackled to the ground by his teammates near first base.
DeGrom surrendered two earned runs on just three hits across six innings in the Mets’ win. He recorded five strikeouts in his 88-pitch outing and stumbled in the sixth inning, appearing gassed as he loaded the bases on a double, walk and hit by pitch. Even then, deGrom mostly escaped the bases-loaded, no outs jam by allowing just one run.
The two-time Cy Young award winner left his outing with the Mets trailing the Phillies by one run. Moments later, Pillar erased that deficit with his first career pinch-hit home run. Pillar’s opposite-field solo shot tied the game at 2 in the seventh inning and Seth Lugo, representing the bridge to closer Edwin Diaz, pitched a perfect eighth.
Diaz, though, was erratic in the ninth inning of a tied game. He hit Andrew McCutchen with a pitch to leadoff the frame, then walked his next batter. McCutchen advanced to third on a wild pitch from Diaz and Nick Maton drove him in on a sacrifice fly to give the Phillies a 3-2 lead.
That was no problem for the never-say-die Mets, who won their second game with a come-from-behind walk-off for the second time in as many days.
