SAN FRANCISCO – For five innings Friday night, Nolan McLean was perfect – 15 batters up, 15 batters down – making one wonder if the second-year right-hander could flirt with perfection in his 10th big league start.
McLean knew better. He had fallen into a ton of deep counts because he had little control of his best pitches, and he admitted he was gassed by the time he lost the perfecto and the no-hitter in the bottom of the sixth.
That he was perfect through five innings was not the most impressive part of his story in the Mets’ 10-3 victory over the Giants at Oracle Park. It was the way he did it, by climbing out of deep holes in the count using what might be his sixth-best pitch, the cutter. He had thrown the pitch just 13 times in his first nine big league starts, per FanGraphs.
That is a bad stat for hitters he has to face.
“If he’s in the zone with two of his pitches, he’s going to be a problem, let alone the six that he throws,” second baseman Marcus Semien said. “So that’s scary. If he’s got a perfect game going and he didn’t feel great, I can’t wait to see what he does when he feels great.”
Nobody watching McLean earn his first 2026 win could have guessed that his shot at a no-hitter was an illusion, but McLean knew.
“It didn’t really feel that way just because of how many 3-2 counts I had and being behind in the counts,” McLean said. “It felt kind of grindier, I guess, than what the scoreboard showed.”
McLean lost the perfect game when he walked sixth-inning leadoff man Harrison Bader on a 3-1 sweeper that never got to its intended location on the inside corner. He walked the next hitter, Patrick Bailey, then lost a potential no-hitter on Willy Adames’ no-doubt RBI double on McLean’s 93rd and final pitch.
McLean said he could not recall ever being perfect through five innings, and here he did it in the Majors.
“You feel good about your chances every time he’s pitching,” manager Carlos Mendoza said after the Mets improved to 7-3 in McLean’s starts. “You feel good about winning that game, and even when he’s not at his best you know that he’s going to keep you in games.”
McLean’s final tally: two runs (one earned), one hit, two walks and four strikeouts, and another nod to his promise as a top-of-the-rotation starter.