MILWAUKEE — Zac Thornton doesn’t pitch like someone making his fourth Major League start.
He pitches like someone who’s convinced he belongs.
Every fastball has conviction. Every pitch comes with intent. And when trouble finally arrived Tuesday night, the 24-year-old rookie never blinked.
Thornton delivered six scoreless innings to earn the first victory of his Major League career, continuing one of the most impressive opening stretches by a Mets starter this season in a 4-0 win over the Brewers at American Family Field.
The results have become impossible to ignore.
Thornton has now posted 18 consecutive scoreless innings, following seven shutout frames vs. the surging Red Sox before the All-Star break with another six against one of baseball’s best teams in the Phillies. Over his past three starts, the rookie owns a 0.47 ERA while allowing opponents to hit just .159 against him.
Just as striking as the numbers is the way he’s getting there.
“He doesn’t lack for confidence,” interim manager Andy Green said. “It’s strikes and it’s attack and it’s intent, and those are really powerful things to have.”
Green watched Thornton pitch long before he reached Queens, dating back to his time overseeing player development. Nothing about this stretch has surprised him.
“No,” Green said. “There is an outing coming that he’s going to have to be resilient and respond to. I think that’s what I trust in him as much as just a few great outings at the outset. He’s going to punch back when he gets punched. That’s who he is.”
That moment nearly arrived in the sixth.
After retiring 13 consecutive Brewers following a first-inning walk, Thornton suddenly found himself with runners at first and second and nobody out. Milwaukee had life for the first time all evening.
Thornton responded with arguably his biggest pitch of the night.
He elevated a fastball past Jackson Chourio for a strikeout before Luis Torrens erased Cooper Pratt trying to advance to third on a passed ball. Moments later, A.J. Ewing tracked down Brice Turang’s fly ball in left-center, sending Thornton off the mound with a roar and an emphatic fist pump.
“I yelled, ‘Let’s go!'” Thornton said of Ewing’s catch. “I was fired up for him. He made two great plays out there.”
It was the lone moment Thornton truly needed to navigate all night.
The rookie scattered three hits, walked one and struck out two, leaning on all five pitches while consistently living on the edges of the strike zone rather than overpowering hitters.
“I think just being effective with all five pitches, in the zone and out of the zone when I need to,” Thornton said. “Just living on the corners. It’s harder to barrel up the baseball with half a strike, half a ball.”
That ability to mix speeds and attack different parts of the zone has quickly become Thornton’s calling card.
“I felt like he was always working ahead,” closer Devin Williams said. “He just really attacked the zone and trusted his stuff.”
Even Brewers manager Pat Murphy came away impressed.
“That kid pitched very well,” Murphy said. “He attacked the zone. He didn’t give up free bases. Credit the kid for how he pitched.”
Thornton’s confidence didn’t suddenly appear after reaching the big leagues.
He traces it back to Barton Community College in Kansas, where he arrived without a single Division I scholarship offer and still relatively new to pitching. His coaches there convinced him he belonged.
“I think those coaches did a really good job of installing confidence into me,” Thornton said. “They gave me the utmost confidence in myself, and I ran with that.”
He’s still running with it.
Thornton insists he isn’t trying to recreate previous outings from one start to the next, instead treating each lineup as a new puzzle.
“I think it’s just, how does my stuff work against this lineup today?” he said.
So far, the answer has been just about every lineup he’s faced.
A season built around difficult questions suddenly has one increasingly encouraging answer.
The rookie who arrived with little fanfare is beginning to look like a pitcher the Mets can count on well beyond this summer.
