NEW YORK – The first prospects to reach the majors as part of the Braves’ rebuilding project are beginning to have an impact, and a pair of them were big keys to a shutout win Tuesday night against the hottest team in baseball.
Matt Wisler allowed just one hit in eight impressive innings and rookie Mallex Smith hit his first major league home run to start the scoring in a 3-0 Braves win against the Mets at Citi Field, only the third loss in 15 games for New York.
The Mets didn’t get a hit until the fifth inning against Wisler (1-2), who limited a power-hitting lineup to one single and two walks with four strikeouts in 106 pitches. He out-shone vaunted Mets pitcher Matt Harvey in Wisler’s 24th major league start, his finest performance since his major league debut, also against the Mets in June 2015.
“When guys got on base I shut them down pretty quick,” Wisler said. “That’s the kind of mindset I’ve got to take.”
Arodys Vizcaino pitched a perfect ninth inning Tuesday to complete the one-hit shutout, only the second time the Mets were blanked this season and first since April 9.
“Gave us eight innings of shutout baseball,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said of Wisler. “Command of the game the whole time. Good for the young man. Just goes to show you, you get good pitching you get a chance to win. And timely hitting.
“I didn’t think that was going to be the case early on in the game, we get (runners on) second and third there and couldn’t get them in. Harvey beared down. But I’m proud of the guys. They gave us good at-bats. We kept getting him deep in counts, grinding at-bats. But I think Wisler is the name of the game today. He was really, really good.”
The Braves are 3-3 on a three-city trip that ends Wednesday, when they’ll go for their second series win of the season and try to snap the Mets’ streak of five consecutive series wins. Jhoulys Chacin (1-1, 3.27 ERA) faces Mets left-hander Steven Matz (3-1, 3.86) in the series finale.
They haven’t lost a series on the trip, splitting two-games at Boston and splitting two at Chicago in a rain-shortened series against the Cubs.
Smith hit a fifth-inning home run off Harvey — initially a triple, it was changed to a homer upon review — and chased him from the game with a two-out single in the sixth inning. The Braves had already scored two runs in the sixth on A.J. Pierzynski’s RBI double and a Harvey wild pitch that scored Pierzynski after he tagged up and hustled to third on a fly out.
Wisler allowed one run and six hits with no walks in his June 19 big-league debut against the Mets, and now he’s 3-1 with a 1.55 ERA in four career starts against them. Tuesday’s performance came after a rough one for Wisler, who gave up five runs in five innings April 26 against the Red Sox, including a three-run Travis Shaw homer in a four-run first inning.
Big innings like that have undermined a few of his starts this season, and Wisler was determined to avoid getting into trouble and letting the Mets put up a “crooked number” in any inning Tuesday. He did that, and much more.
“He wills himself,” Gonzalez said of Wisler’s penchant for bounced back strong after a rough outing. “He doesn’t take anything for granted. I came in, everybody’s exciting, and he’s over in the training room getting ready for his next start, doing his exercises. He’ll come in tomorrow, watch film, get his body ready for a start down the road. This guy, for being a young guy, he’s really good work ethic and he pays attention to detail and just keeps getting better.”
