McLean -- 9.00 ERA in past 3 starts -- looks to rebound vs. Padres
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SAN DIEGO -- For the first time in his young big league career, Nolan McLean is struggling. It was bound to happen at some point.
The Mets’ phenom -- who is coming off two of the worst starts of his career and a career-high five walks in his most recent appearance against Miami last weekend -- knows where his problems lie ahead of his scheduled start against the Padres Saturday night at Petco Park.
Based on how Mets manager Carlos Mendoza sees it, it’s only a matter of time before McLean turns things around.
“This is the first time he’s been challenged at this level,” Mendoza said of McLean last weekend. “But if somebody’s equipped to make adjustments and go out there and compete, it’s Nolan.”
McLean’s biggest hindrance over his past three starts -- a stretch in which he owns a 9.00 ERA over 14 innings -- has been his inability to land his secondary pitches for strikes, which has forced him, at times, to lean more than he would like to on his fastballs (sinker, four-seamer, cutter).
Positive strides were made against the Marlins last time out, with McLean allowing two hits over five innings of one-run ball, but five free passes and a hit batter indicate that he clearly wasn’t at his sharpest.
McLean noted after the start that he has been working on mechanical adjustments to correct this trend.
“It’s still a work in progress,” he said. “I thought at times I kind of got away from what I’ve been working on between starts. So hopefully, I can continue to clean it up.”
Saturday night in San Diego will be another formidable test for the 24-year-old, but he may be catching the Padres at an ideal time.
San Diego has dropped 10 of its last 11 games following the Mets’ 5-0 victory on Friday, a skid that has been marred by poor offensive production that has plagued the Padres all season. They scored 88 runs all of May, the second fewest in MLB, only ahead of the Tigers in that span.
The main culprit, surprisingly, has been the Padres’ stars, with Manny Machado (.617 OPS), Fernando Tatis Jr. (.660), Xander Bogaerts (.653) and Jackson Merrill (.611) all turning in lackluster results thus far.