Behind another strong pitching effort, the Mets won for the fourth time in their last five games with a 2-1 victory over the Braves Sunday afternoon in Atlanta. The Mets took three out of four against their division rivals.
- Seth Lugo made his first start of the season and he kept the team’s recent string of solid starting pitching alive, as he allowed just 1 ER in 7 IP. He also contributed a booming double to center field.
- Infield defense has been a problem but perhaps the biggest play of the game was a double play started by Asdrubal Cabrera. He made a sliding stop and made a flip from his knees. Neil Walker charged hard across the bag and fired a strong throw to first base. Originally, the batter was called safe, which would have allowed the tying run to score. But it was overturned on replay. Cabrera also made a nice barehand play charging a ball.
- The offense wasn’t much to write home about and both runs were of the scratch variety. The most interesting thing about the offense was in the ninth inning and involved strategic decisions. The first two batters got on base, bringing up Rene Rivera. After a strong start, Rivera was just 6-36. The Mets had a bunch of strong hitters on the bench but opted to have Rivera attempt a sacrifice. He bunted a ball in the air and was retired without advancing the runners.
- Next up was Jose Reyes, who’s been mired in a slump of his own and who got thrown out trying to steal 3B with Michael Conforto at the plate. Reyes was allowed to bat and you’ll never guess what he did. Well, maybe you will as he popped up. That brought the pitcher’s spot up and Curtis Granderson was sent up to hit. The Braves had a lefty warming up but with Yoenis Cespedes on the bench, the Braves did not make a move. Granderson got an infield single to load the bases.
- With Conforto up, the Braves brought in the lefty. And despite having two hits already in the game, the Mets sent Cespedes up to pinch-hit for Conforto. But he was unable to deliver a grand slam for a second straight day, instead popping out to end the inning.
- There were a lot of decisions that can be second guessed in the inning. My preference would have been to pinch-hit for Rivera but it’s not like the club had someone who would have been guaranteed to get a bunt down. I would have liked to have seen Travis d’Arnaud come up to swing away but the bunt was a defensible play there.
- But Addison Reed came back one day after a five-out save with an easy 1-2-3 ninth to nail down the win.
I was impressed by Lugo today. In the Bottom of the 6th:
Flowers— 82 mph Curve…Flyout….1 out
Carango————————K………….2 out
-76.5 CB,,,Ball
-82 mph Change…called strike
-76 mph Curve…called Strike
-93.9 mph Elevated Fastball…swinging strike
Swanson————————Flyout…….3 out
-78mph curve, Ball one
-86 mph Slider….Flyout to center
in game, that K pitch registered at 95— GameDay has 93.9
If the guy has that kind of upper register, and the ability to mix pitches and speeds with Location….. he has a lot nicer top end than I previously thought.
That 6th inning is Brilliant…7 pitches!!????….and it shows talent and development.
It took 2 cats coming back from rehab (Matz & Lugo) to hopefully show these other pitchers how to do it ! How to keep their pitch counts down, get the team to the 7th at the least. Harvey, deGrom, Wheeler, and to a lesser extent Gsellman should all take notice and stop wasting bullets, stay in the game and keep the BP sharp.
The BP is the culprit of the team being 5 games out of .500, but it is not the only cause. The main cause is getting overused because the starters can’t get to 6-7 innings, god knows 8th or a miracle complete game once every blue moon !
I count at least 9 BP blow ups so far this year. You don’t get them all in baseball, for sure, but say Mets got 5 of those, plus the Reyes “pop up blown” game vs Phillies, that is 6 more in the W column, 6 less in the L column.
Team would be 3.5 games behind the Nats with them coming into CitiField this week for 4. Even with all the injuries !
Come on man ! Someone wake those pitching coaches up.
Get the guys to give the team 6-7 innings and the Mets will win the majority of those games. Not every batter needs to be a strikeout, not every hitter needs to get to a 3-2 count. Better scouting reports, better understanding of who they are facing can keep counts down. BP will then be ready to do what it does, if reasonably rested, even without Familia.
I don’t like PHing for Conforto in that spot, and really dislike the thought process behind it.
A terrible decision.
Me neither. Sends a terrible message to Conforto, and expecting magic back to back is like voodoo at best. Not a fan at all.
agree….. why not PH for Grandy???
Pinch hitting for Conforto infuriated me. It sends the wrong message to a player who has been clearly the best player on the team during the 2017 season. It was a terrible move by TC.
Five straight well pitched games. Lugo was impressive. Conforto had two hits against Garcia, the most in the game. Cabrera with a great defensive game. In the end though, it is all about the pitching.
Until we rattle off 10/12 or 13/16 against good clubs we should rightly be smiling, but certainly need to not overdue the enthusiasm. I think expecting Matz and Lugo to this nightly is a lot of pressure…but of course welcomed. The other thing is I’m not sure this impacts our other pitchers. Its not like they are trying to run up pitch counts.
sorry..I mis-stated that…. I don;t undertsand why they’d PH Grandy instead of Ces…. I’d Have prefererred that, with Conforto hitting—would have been a “stronger lineup”, and it would have been better defensively—- and it would have given you the best chance to get your best hitter up.
I believe they realized they blew the move—if Grandy is out, the game could have ended in the 9th with Cess still on the Bench—and That is why it’s such a piss poor decision in the first place.
The only way to guarantee that Cess gets an AB would have been to bat Him for the Pitcher.
Horible game management—2 days in a row. Although Yesterday’s PH situation with Rivera worked, it was also a questionable move, in my opinion. He left a slow runner on 2b)flores), and 2 better hitters on the bench…Yikes!!~!…and he also let Grandy fail against a Lefty—Then brought Lagares in as a defensive replacement in the bottom of the inning (yesterday)
Collins again had me saying wtf?! Two men on and no outs. Cespedes should have pinch hit for Rivera or Reyes. With the red hot Swanson due up the next inning we really could have used insurance and I had a bad feeling that Collins’ managing was going to cost us another’s game. Thankfully Reed came through with the save.
I understand not wanting to weaken the defense with a 2-1 lead.
Conforto earned that AB.
Horrendous decision.
I couldn’t blame Conforto if he thought to himself, “Oh no, here we go again.”
And is that what we want our best player to be thinking?
Let me share a conversation with a bigger Mets fan than me, my buddy Artie back in Brooklyn. We spoke tonight and since he hadn’t seen the game, when I told him the bases were loaded and they brought in a lefty for Conforto, he blurted out “He better have put Cespedes up there”. I asked why, and he said it’s only 2-1 and while Conforto has been good, he has been a bit cooler lately and hasn’t been too consistent against lefties this year. I argued about giving him a chance in that situation, but he kept insisting it’s only 2-1 with one one inning left. Besides, we all know Collins is managing every game like its the seventh game of the World Series (different problem). Let’s see his point:
Conforto against lefties this year: .233/.378/.533. Not bad, but that .233 does give me hesitation.
Conforto overall the last 28 days: .224/.389/.471; the last 7 days: .067/.417/.133
Hence, maybe it wasn’t such a terrible move at this very point in time and despite the fact that I wouldn’t do it, I can follow the logic. Artie always sees that other side I never can…
Gus…. he ph granny with 2 out—- against a lefty. He left open the possibility that the Braves would win on the bottom of the inning with Cess not getting an ab in that situation?
Why didn’t Cess ph Instead of Grandy? That was the only way to be sure that you weren’t leaving the Cess ab unused.
The ph for Comforto was bothersome, but more so because he should have made the same switch a batter earlier!
Getting his biggest weapon in the game was a defensible move…. like it or not—- but he missed the move the first time around
Eraff, the lefty came in for Conforto. Look at the box score: He inherited three runners. In fact, Gary and Ron even pointed out that the Braves manager (Snitka?) purposely did not bring in the lefty against Granderson because he knew Cespedes was sitting on the bench and would hit for Granny but he brought him in against Conforto because he didn’t expect the Mets to pinch hit for Conforto. In a sense, Collins won that chess match. He’s a genius!! Expect the announcers to crow that tonight at some point.
However, if your point is with TDA, Duda, Granderson, and Cespedes on the bench how did a rivers and Reyes hit? There, I have no clue.
Again, these are never simple decisions, though (again) I strongly feel that Conforto should have hit.
But up 2-1, I make no move that weakens my team defensively.
wow—I think I was just fired as Manager!