The New York Mets had a tremendous 8-3 win over the Houston Astros on Tuesday afternoon at Clover Park. Jacob deGrom allowed one run with six strikeouts and Francisco Lindor, Dominic Smith, and Pete Alonso all homered.
Sam McWilliams closed out their five-run win in the ninth inning, going an inning and allowing no hits. His only baserunner was a leadoff walk to Alex De Goti before he was quickly taken off the basepaths thanks to a 5-4-3 double play. McWilliams struck out C.J. Hinojosa to end the game.
So far this spring the 6-foot-7 right-hander hasn’t allowed a run in three innings of work and has struck out four. The Mets have been “amazed with his stuff,” according to Metsmerized’s John Flanigan. In fact, they believe in him so much that they are trying to build him into a multi-inning reliever.
McWilliams was definitely an early target for the Mets this offseason despite having an 8.18 ERA in the minors in 2019. The Mets gave him $750,000 and a major league deal this offseason partly because they believed in the changes he was making to become a better pitcher.
“I had thrown two and four-seamers my whole career,” McWilliams told Sports Illustrated in December 2020. “After last year I just felt both had become inconsistent. Throwing the two-seamer, it made the four-seamer inconsistent, causing me to get almost on the side of the ball. So that winter going into 2020 I decided to scrap the two-seamer. I just worked on getting behind the four-seamer and commanding it. We had talked about it with the Rays before, as to what gets the best results. The data showed that the two-seamer was average to plus sometimes, but it wasn’t anything to generate whiffs.”
Going into spring camp, McWilliams wanted to “make the slider as hard as possible while still getting that glove side cut, and with the fastball, it was all about chasing that vertical movement while getting behind it as much as possible to get true backspin.”
So far, McWilliams is seeing his hard work pay off and has even shown he can get out of trouble (even if it’s self-inflicted). On March 9, he walked three straight batters to start the ninth inning but still didn’t allow a single run, as he retired the next three batters including infield prospect Nolan Gorman.
McWilliams will see time in the majors but it’s just a question of how soon.
