When Johan Santana went down for the season, the man filling his spot in the rotation had some pretty big shoes to fill. Today, Nelson Figueroa was as good as you could ask for.
Seven innings of six-hit baseball saw Figueroa through his longest outing of the season. While on the mound, Figueroa struck out 10 Cubs, nine in the first four inning, a career high strikeout count.
Figueroa allowed one run in the first inning, but bounced back from there, allowing only five hits over the next six inning.
I love Figueroa and always have since he came up last year. Glad he’s putting together some starts and maybe showing the Mets he can be a fifth starter next year. Maybe.
Brian Stokes turned in a 1-2-3 8th inning and Francisco Rodriguez saved the game after a bit of pressure. Kosuke Fukudome led off the inning with a single and Jeff Francoeur dropped Jake Fox’s pop-up, but was able to throw out Fukudome at second.
Never easy.
The Mets got a pair of runs in the third and fourth innings, respectively.
In the third, the Mets stitched singles from Angel Pagan, Luis Castillo, Daniel Murphy and Jeff Francoeur together to drive in two runs. Murphy and Francoeur each picked up an RBI with their singles.
In the fourth, Brian Schneider hit a one-out single. Schneider was chased in by an Anderson Hernandez triple. Figueroa helped his own cause with an RBI single of his own, driving in Hernandez from third.
Eleven hits off of Carlos Zambrano is no small task. A good few innings from the Mets, but went fairly quiet from there on out, picking up only one hit the rest of the game.
Luckily, it was enough.
This time.
“Obviously we don't have any other choices, and I think this is important in his development, even though we're not only here to develop. We're here to win games.”