PHILADELPHIA -- Jacob deGrom rolled up his sleeve to reveal a squarish welt on the back of his right arm. In the center of the raised flesh was a string of red stitch marks, imprinted from where a line drive struck him Thursday in the Mets' 10-0 win over the Phillies.
To his credit, deGrom barely flinched. When Nick Williams hit a 99-mph line drive off his right triceps, deGrom simply stalked off the mound, paced a few steps and waited for the inevitable news that the Mets were taking him out of the game.
Consider that last bit precautionary. X-rays were negative on deGrom, who suffered nothing more than a right triceps contusion. At 100 pitches, deGrom was all but done for the day anyway, making his exit from the game inevitable, injury or not.

"We're very lucky," Mets manager Terry Collins said.
The Mets expect deGrom to make his next start, with hopes that it will be every bit as good as this one.
Cruising into the seventh inning of one of his most effective outings of the season, deGrom caught a bit too much plate with an 0-2 breaking ball, leaving it where Williams could pull it back up the middle. As deGrom followed through on the pitch, the ball careened back at him, ricocheting onto the infield grass for a single. Following a brief conference with Collins and trainer Ray Ramirez, deGrom walked off the field under his own power.

"When it first hit me, it obviously didn't feel good," deGrom said. "But I was fortunate enough it didn't get me in the elbow. It was above it. I was thinking, 'Man, that hurt. Can I still throw?' Then it set in and it was just kind of a dead arm feeling. Terry asked me where it hit me. I said, 'It hit me in the arm,' and he said, 'All right, you're done.' And I wasn't really arguing because my arm was hurting at the time."
Reliever Erik Goeddel entered and stranded both baserunners, holding deGrom's ERA at 3.21 -- its lowest mark since April.

In the aftermath of deGrom's exit, the Mets hoped mostly that the bruise has no effect on his future performance. Since deGrom's season bottomed out when he dropped to 4-3 with a 4.75 ERA on June 6, he has gone a Major League-best 9-2 with a 1.82 ERA, 85 strikeouts and 16 walks in 79 1/3 innings. Only Corey Kluber, at 1.62, owns a better ERA over that stretch.
"He really mixed up his pitches well. I thought he threw the ball great tonight," Collins said. "We're lucky that he came out of it. He'll get some treatment on it and we'll see how he's going to be."