Just a day after David Peterson put together his best start of the season in the Mets’ series finale walk-off win over the Angels, right-hander Tylor Megill followed suit with a dominant outing of his own.
While the bullpen ended up spoiling the effort in the late-innings in a frustrating 4-3 loss, Megill’s performance was extremely encouraging.
He had his strikeout pitch working early, putting away four batters the first time through the order. That was the theme for him on the night, as he ended up recording a series-high eight punch-outs.
Megill cruised through the first five innings limiting traffic on the bases, but he finally ran into some trouble against the top of the order in the sixth. A Marcus Semien leadoff double followed by a Corey Seager infield single set up two on with nobody out.
The big righty rolled a double-play ball to get two-thirds of the way out of the inning, but an Adolis Garcia double brought home Texas’ first run of the game. He rebounded to get Robbie Grossman swinging to end both the inning and his start on a high note.
Megill allowed just the one run on five hits while walking just one and striking out eight across six innings. It was his best outing of the year, which left manager Buck Showalter impressed.
“Really good outing from Tylor,” the skipper said postgame. “Really impressive, that’s a really good hitting team. We know they're trying to operate on all cylinders with where they're in the season.
"To be able to do that, that was really good to see, I wish we could’ve rewarded him with the win that he deserved."
It certainly was good to see from Megill, who found himself in Triple-A not too long ago, and has had a rough season to this point. The right-hander now has a 5.29 ERA on the year but he seems to be trending in the right direction.
Megill is hoping to be able to build off the boost he received from this performance moving forward.
“The process was hard and difficult in the beginning,” Megill said. “But I feel like for the most part it’s been a lot of positives leading up to this coming back. Over the past three of four starts I’ve had a couple of good ones.
“I feel like all of my stuff was on tonight and I could throw just about any of my pitches in any count,” he added. “When you go against a lineup like that, it gives a lot of confidence to go out against the best hitters and have those results.”
Megill will look to build off this strong start when he faces another tough task this weekend in the red-hot Seattle Mariners.