The first three innings were scoreless with Jacob deGrom striking out 7 Nationals, while Gio Gonzalez held the Mets hitless. In the top of the 4th inning the Nationals loaded the bases on 2 walks and a Daniel Murphy single with one out. Luckily for the Mets, Murphy tried to score on an RBI single by Matt Wieters and was easily thrown out at the plate by Curtis Granderson limiting the damage to just one run.
The National struck again in the 5th inning for two more runs and another play at the plate. This one however went in favor of the Nationals, when Trea Turner just slide in safely ahead of Michael Conforto’s throw for a 3-0 lead.
Degrom left after 5 and 2/3 innings giving up 3 earned runs with 10 strikeouts and 6 walks a very odd line overall. Josh Edgin came on to get Bryce Harper with 2 runners on to end the 6th inning.
The Mets finally broke through offensively in the bottom half of the 6th. Jose Reyes lead off with a walk and Juan Lagares got the team’s first hit with a single up the middle. Following a Conforto strikeout, Asdrubal Cabrera followed with an RBI single.
Unfortunately, the Mets were unable to garner any more offense and lost the game 3-1. The bullpen threw 3 and 1/3 scoreless innings. The series finale is the Sunday night game at 8 PM eastern. Zach Wheeler will face Max Scherzer as the Mets try to salvage a win.
It is difficult staring at a 8-10 record when based on the competition they should be at 11-7. It is disheartening to see all the injuries piling up again. There is close to 90% of the games left so there is a lot of season left.
deGrom needed to get through the sixth inning but after having two difficult innings in the 4th and 5th, looking fatigued and having thrown 101 pitches, TC made the correct choice bringing in Edgin to face Harper. I advocated in the Chatter to keep Edgin in by making a double switch with Reyes for Rivera (who made the last out) to try to get the 7th inning out of him to save the overused bullpen. These short stints by second tier relievers along with the extra inning games are killing the bullpen.
It is time to win a ballgame.
Point taken on Edgin. But also I’d submit that the poor quality of the second tier relievers has also put added pressure on the top relievers. It’s not like more innings for Montero or Gilmartin would be a good thing.
Ultimately, losing Familia hurt. Combined with 12 games in a row early in the season, when starters were not going deep. Combined with close games and extra inning games. A lot of things conspired to make it hard on the quality relievers. Still, the pen is short a quality arm, and features too many unreliable types you simply should not put into a close game.
You anticipate trouble when the back half of your bullpen pitches…there’s no escaping that, especially given the quantity of games, extra innings games, and the injuries to Lugo and Matz…. and the absence of Familia.
What you cannot anticipate is the virtual Non Participation of “Guys with Baseball Cards”. …. OPS:::: Walker .576, Granderson .487, Flores 537….. Reyes— .313 !!!!! .313!!!!!!!! I know Rivera is taken to be a non-stick, but he’s gonna catch 35-40% of our games, and he’s at .543.
Those guys have 255 of the 626 at bats—- 40% of their ab’s are woefully unproductive so far. They have had 4-5 non-competitive lineup slots in every game.
The .671 team OPS is a fairly weak performance, but the impact of empty lineup slots impacts the necessary Offensive Sequence even more than it impacts the Statistic itself. You cannot score runs consistently with so many lineup holes.