Ross Detwiler wasn’t exactly feeling his best during his last start against the Arizona Diamondbacks last Sunday. An illness hampered him that afternoon and he wasn’t feeling much better two days later in San Francisco. Detwiler is only now getting over it and with a fresh bullpen, manager Davey Johnson limited his lefty to six innings on Friday in a 6-4 win over the New York Mets.

It was a pretty solid six innings, though. Detwiler struggled to keep his sinker down in the first inning and gave up a two-run single to Daniel Murphy – one of three consecutive hits followed by a walk. That free pass to Jason Bay brought out a steamed Steve McCatty, Washington’s pitching coach. Detwiler joked he couldn’t remember anything McCatty said to him, but it must have worked.

He escaped the inning and allowed three doubles the rest of the way – two more by Scott Hairston. But the Mets did no further damage save for a run scored in the sixth inning on an RBI ground out. Detwiler gave up three runs on six hits with a walk and a strikeout. He threw just 84 pitches, 53 of them for strikes, and his ERA is now 3.25. Not a bad recovery.   

Johnson later said he wanted to lay off relievers Ryan Mattheus and Sean Burnett, but was willing to use everyone else. So Detwiler’s night was finished a little early. He’s hopeful by his next start he’ll be back to full strength. When asked if he changed anything after the first inning Detwiler deadpanned “Not to Hairston.” He was the only Mets batter who had Detwiler figured out – though the pitcher wasn’t exactly sure why. He wanted to check out some video to see if he was leaving the ball up. Because if not he was at a loss. Late in the game the sinker finally began to drop, which was good because Detwiler was struggling to control his other offerings.

“I kind of missed the inside corner early in the game so I just had to stay away and they knew,” Detwiler said. “They knew I was missing so they kind of jumped on that. I think I just kind of got a little more fine with my pitches, further down in the zone easier to get a ground ball instead of letting them get under it like they did.”

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