CINCINNATI – The telling sign didn’t come until the last batter of the first inning. The Reds’ Javier Valentin was at the plate, and that’s when Paul Lo Duca seemed to think Pedro Martinez got moving.
“He turned it up a notch,” Lo Duca said. “When he hit 88, 89, it was like, all right, here we go.”
Lo Duca called the Valentin turn “the key at-bat,” and maybe he was right. Martinez got the Cincinnati catcher to fly out to end his first inning of major league ball this season, and he didn’t face too many problems after that.
Determining key at-bats in a Pedro Martinez outing hadn’t been required yet in 2007. But yesterday Martinez returned, and in perhaps one of the most anticipated performances in Mets history, his dramatic comeback was triumphant. In pitching for the first time since last Sept. 27, Martinez – who’d been out with a torn rotator cuff – earned the victory in the Mets’ 10-4 romp over the Reds.
Martinez seemed to go down a checklist of things he accomplished yesterday, and that’s apparently how he evaluated his successful outing. In what he called “a first kind of ‘get your feet wet’ outing,” Martinez wasn’t spectacular, but he was solid, hurling five innings and allowing three runs, two earned.
He gave up five hits – two after the first inning – while striking out four and hitting 90 mph. Martinez threw 76 pitches, which was essentially his maximum, and said that he was “pleased with the way everything went.”
“It could have been different. It could have been worse. It could have been better,” he said. “Who knows? But I’m just pleased with the fact that I’m healthy, and I came out of this healthy and I have a chance to do it one more time.”
Martinez’s next turn figures to be Sunday at Shea against the Astros – the crowd reaction there should be absurd – and he said he thinks he’ll continue to see his pitches get sharper, his location become more pinpoint and his velocity go higher.
“He’s going to get stronger,” Lo Duca said.
Martinez’s return has been trumpeted for weeks, and after four minor league rehab starts, he took the hill yesterday. He was perhaps rusty, and he suffered some unfortunate developments early – including an infield knuckler for a hit and a double that Moises Alou admitted he “misplayed” – helping the Reds to two early runs.
But Martinez retired the next nine, including two strikeouts (the latter the 3,000th of his career), and although he gave up an unearned run in the fourth, he carried a 4-3 lead into the fifth where the Reds eventually had first and third with two outs. Martinez was at 75 pitches, and lefty slugger Adam Dunn was up.
Willie Randolph, though, didn’t leave the dugout, opting to let Martinez continue (the manager considered an earlier intentional walk to not factor into his pitch count). Martinez then got Dunn to ground to first to end the inning, the ace pumping his arm and punching Carlos Delgado’s glove.
“At that time, I just realized that I just achieved what I was supposed to do for my first game,” Martinez said. “This is considered like a rehab game. And I was able to get five innings in, give my team a chance to win, make it a quality outing and at the same time, I came out healthy.”
The Mets, meanwhile, have now won four straight and stand five games up on the Phillies. Said Martinez, “Since I showed up here, everybody’s starting to call me ‘lucky charm.’ ”
Nearly a year later, the lucky charm is again pitching.