Gomber carves up Mets in career-best start

Rockies left-hander Austin Gomber could hardly wait for the next impressive pitch on Monday night at Citi Field. He forcefully chewed gum in the dugout and even stretched and paced while the Rockies were batting. When his team’s turn ended, he dashed to the mound ready for warmup pitches before the Mets were off the field.

Gomber made quick work of the Mets, holding them to two runs and four hits in a career-high eight-plus innings while striking out a career-high eight in the Rockies’ fourth straight victory -- and a rare one on the road -- 3-2.

“I always work fast, right?” Gomber said. “That’s part of who I am. The biggest thing for me is kind of when to slow it down when I notice I start to lose the zone a little bit, and step back, take a deep breath and slow it down.

“But tonight, I was on a good rhythm, throwing strikes.”

Gomber threw 103 pitches in the brisk 2-hour, 43-minute contest, before giving way to Carlos Estévez and his two strikeouts in a nail-biting ninth that put to bed a season-long nightmare. In the previous four road-trip openers, the Rockies had been outscored, 27-1. Gomber had pitched three of those -- two of them poorly.

There is work to do, with the Rockies 3-17 on the road. But after climbing out of last place in the National League West by sweeping the D-backs over the weekend, Gomber did not want a same-old-same-old start to this seven-game trip to New York and Pittsburgh.

“We feel like we’re starting to play well, and things are starting to move in the right direction,” Gomber said. “The thing was just keep that going, get us off to a good start. Hopefully, we can keep that momentum the rest of the trip.”

The Rockies are 19-29. But in the last 15 games, the rotation has a 2.71 ERA and has yielded just a .225 batting average. The Rockies are 7-8 in those games, mainly because of offensive and bullpen foibles that they expect to correct. As long as they have pitching performances of the ilk of Gomber, who has a 1.40 ERA and a .183 batting average against in his last three outings, there’s a chance to win no matter what other parts of the team struggle.

The more the Rockies learn of Gomber -- the lone Major League-experienced player they received in the deal that sent star third baseman Nolan Arenado to the Cardinals -- the more there is to like.

Manager Bud Black recalled that he appreciated Gomber’s “upbeat tempo” since first seeing him pitch in Spring Training. Gomber’s curveball left the most positive early impression, and the slider and fastball were judged good enough to make him a part of the Rockies’ pitching future.

But Monday, Gomber used his changeup more frequently and to greater effect than at any point in his career with the Cardinals in 2018 and 2020, or in his first starts with the Rockies. He threw 28 of them -- 10 more than in any of his previous 52 Major League games. He used the changeup nine times for outs.

“I just finished talking to him about the changeup tonight,” Black said. “That was the thing that separated this game from other games -- the use of the changeup, and the number of outs recorded and the disrupting of their timing.”

Gomber faced the minimum number of batters until James McCann’s two-out homer in the seventh, but he had been handed a rare lead. Second-inning solo shots by Ryan McMahon and Elias Díaz off Mets starter David Peterson, and Garrett Hampson’s run-scoring triple in the fourth gave Gomber a cushion that he turned out needing. Gomber left after yielding Brandon Drury’s pinch-hit homer and another hit to lead off the ninth.

But Estévez -- pitching in part because regular closer Daniel Bard had thrown 41 pitches the last two days, and in part because he may at some point get a chance as closer -- fanned McCann to end it with the potential tying run at second.

“I can’t say enough about the job the boys did behind me -- defensively, offensively, Estévez coming out of the bullpen,” Gomber said. “It was awesome.”