It took some time for Tylor Megill’s strong winter to start translating into results on the field.
But that finally appears to be happening for Megill, who turned in another solid outing by pitching five innings of two-run ball in an eventual 11-6 Mets victory over the Padres on Sunday.
Outside of a hairy first inning in which Megill worked himself into trouble after retiring the first two batters, the righty was rarely threatened.
After stranding a runner on third in that opening inning, it took San Diego until the fifth — when consecutive doubles opened the inning — to get anyone else into scoring position.
Megill pinpointed the third as when he started to work most effectively.
“I was kind of trying to nitpick corners [early], be too cute with it instead of just firing them in there, let them hit it,” he said. “Then after that, I was in. Really establishing the bottom half, I felt like, and also the top half [of the zone]. Cutter was working well, splitters were good … a couple sweepers today.”
It was not dominant in the way Megill’s seven innings of scoreless ball against the Dodgers a couple weeks ago was — manager Carlos Mendoza described it as the pitcher finding a way when he didn’t have his best stuff — but it worked just fine for the Mets on a day when their bats were going.
Megill worked with a fastball-heavy five-pitch mix, but threw in a lone changeup to set down Fernando Tatis Jr. looking to open the third — a sign he was feeling confident enough to try something different against San Diego’s best hitter.
The splitter Megill added over the offseason was used as an out-pitch as well to strike out Jackson Merrill to finish the first.
“The fastball had life,” Mendoza said. “He threw a couple splits, but I don’t think it was at its best, it came and went. The cutter was inconsistent as well, but he found ways to make pitches.”
It is no longer early in the season, certainly not for the Mets, who burned through a lot of their margin for error in a horror-show May.
But it is early for Megill’s season, with Sunday just his sixth start of the season after suffering a shoulder strain in his first outing back in March.
Five starts post-return and Megill’s ERA is sitting at 3.52 — a career-best by nearly a full run.
So maybe there was something in that winter training after all.
