New York Mets starting pitcher Blade Tidwell struggled in his major league debut on Sunday afternoon in St. Louis, yielding six runs on nine hits in 3.2 innings of work.
Undone by a four-run fourth inning, the youngest Mets starter since 2017 gave up a pair of two-out, two-run singles to Brendan Donovan and Willson Contreras to sour his first taste of life in the big leagues.
He struck out two and walked three on 81 pitches, dealing with an abundance of traffic in the process. The velocities on his pitches varied drastically. His fastball ranged between 92 and 98 mph, his sinker clocked in between 93 and 98 mph, and his slider came in between 79 and 86 mph.
Tidwell also worked in a changeup and a cutter.
He worked around a one-out Brendan Donovan single to get through his first big-league inning unscathed, yielding a pair of groundouts and a pop-up.
Contreras led off the second with his fourth home run of the season to tie the game at one apiece, taking an 0-1 slider that sat middle-middle the other way and just over the right-field wall.
Following a walk of Nolan Gorman, Tidwell picked up his first major-league strikeout when he got Cardinals catcher Pedro Pages to chase on a slider that cut outside the zone. He got Lars Nootbar looking at a 98-mph four-seam fastball to get out of the second.
With a 2-1 lead entering the third, Tidwell allowed three-straight one-out hits to load the bases before a Nolan Gorman sac fly drew the Cardinals level again.
He loaded the bases again in the fourth and couldn’t sneak a 94-mph fastball past Donovan, who grounded a two-run single up the middle to make it 4-2.
After Nolan Arenado walked, Contreras threw his bat at an outside, 1-2 fastball and punched it through the right side to score two more. He was relieved by lefty Genesis Cabrera.
According to MLB Pipeline, Tidwell is the No. 15-ranked prospect in the Mets’ farm system. He struggled in Triple-A, posting a 5.00 ERA in six starts. However, the organization sees plus stuff, mainly that he struck out 37 in 27 innings of work.
Eighteen of those punchouts came in his previous two starts (nine innings) with just one walk.
His call-up came out of necessity, considering the Mets wanted to expand to a six-man rotation amidst a stretch of 13 games in 13 straight days. Saturday’s rainout, which created Sunday’s doubleheader in St. Louis, only further exacerbated the need to call up an additional arm.
