Mike Nickeas had been mired in a malaise, had struggled so horribly at Citi Field, one had to wonder if his nightmares were of his own home ballpark. But in yesterday’s 9-0 rout of San Diego, he broke out of his skid in grandiose style.
He hit a grand slam, the first of his career, and the Mets’ first of the year. That blast was the exclamation point on a fine day behind the plate catching Johan Santana’s complete-game shutout, and the exclamation point in the Mets’ five-run eighth inning.
“As a catcher, the most gratifying thing is when a guy can go complete game shutout after however long it was. The grand slam was the icing for me,’’ said Nickeas, who had been 2-for-28 at home before hitting the Mets’ first slam since Jason Bay on Sept. 8.
“You grind out through this game a lot. That’s part of baseball,” Nickeas added. “I’ve struggled here at home hitting, so it was a tremendous feeling for me to be able to do something to get the weight off my shoulders. Hopefully now I can just relax and go.’’
It’s not as if Nickeas had been on fire on the road, either. He snapped an 0-for-17 slump on Wednesday and had struck out in 11 of his last 19 at-bats when he came to the plate in the eighth, a funk that was weighing on his mind.
“Yeah, absolutely, it always does. You go 0-for-6 in this game and you start thinking about it. It’s good to kind of get it out of the way,’’ said Nickeas, who acknowledged he hasn’t been seeing the ball well. “I don’t know if that’s pressing, or a mechanical flaw, but it’s better now.’’
He shortened up his swing on an 0-1 count, and when Dale Thayer hung a 93 mph fastball about belt-high, Nickeas got it just over the left-field wall into the Party City Deck. It was a home run due to the new dimensions here at Citi Field, but new dimensions or old, his career-high four RBI were sweet all the same.
“I give a lot of credit to [batting coach Dave Hudgens], he’s in the battle with me. I know he’s living and dying by my at-bats as well. He’s in the cage with me every day,’’ said Nickeas. “That last at-bat I almost went to a two-strike type approach early on in the count and it kept me a little shorter, helped out.’’
And behind the dish, Nickeas was in perfect sync with Santana for a shutout that was so efficient it almost looked easy.
“It’s never easy, because you’re always waiting. Momentum switches quickly in this game. But we were able to hold it the whole time. There was never a point where we thought this is starting to slip out of our grasp,’’ said Nickeas. “I never want to say it’s easy, but when Johan’s on, it makes it that much easier.’’