With Jonathon Niese a ball away from walking Chris Denorfia to lead off the third inning last night, Rod Barajas wanted to make sure the Mets lefty threw a strike.
If Denorfia got a hit, so be it. But Barajas didn’t want to hand the Padres center fielder a free base.
“You don’t want to walk anybody. If they’re going to reach base, you’re going to make them earn it. You’re going to make them swing the bat,” Barajas said. “It was just a fastball that was over the plate and he put it where nobody was at.”
On a 3-2 count, Niese did throw a strike — no walk here — and Denorfia doubled to right for what turned out to be the Padres’ only baserunner of the game. Niese threw a sparkling one-hit, one-baserunner complete-game shutout in the Mets’ 3-0 win.
Barajas, who has never caught a no-hitter, knows the Mets have never had a pitcher throw one.
“If it was later in the game,” he said. “I probably would have approached [the Denorfia at-bat] a little differently. . . . It just happened so early where I wasn’t thinking about what could possibly happen yet.”
Barajas said in a later-game scenario, he wouldn’t have called for a get-it-over fastball. Even if that would have meant walking Denorfia, that would have hurt, but at least Niese could have still had a no-hitter going.
“If a guy’s got something going on, something special, you’d love to have a perfect game. But worst-case scenario, you’ll take a no-hitter,” Barajas said. “If you do walk him, you can live with it. But yeah, being as early as it was, close game, make this guy work to get on base. He did it.”
Had it been later in the game, Barajas said he likely would have called for a cutter.
“I’m completely comfortable calling it 3-2, 3-1, 2-0 [in the count],” he said. “But just in that situation, I didn’t feel like that was the pitch to throw at that time.”
mark.hale@nypost.com