Luis Castillo – the electric young pitcher, not the retired second baseman – showed the Mets why he leads all Major League starters in ERA. With a mix of high riding fastballs and darting change ups, he kept the Mets lineup off balance for six innings. The Mets lone run against him at that point came courtesy of an RBI bunt by Jeff McNeil.
Jason Vargas pitched his best game of the season. The moribund lefty held the Reds scoreless for five innings and even took the mound in the sixth inning. But after one quick out, he allowed a game-tying solo home run to Eugenio Suarez and Mickey Callaway pulled him in favor of Robert Gsellman. Gsellman kept the Reds in check through the seventh inning.
In the bottom of the seventh, Todd Frazier led off with a solo home run to give the Mets a 2-1 lead and with a runner on second, Dom Smith entered as a pinch hitter for Gsellman in hopes of delivering an insurance run, but he struck out.
With closer Edwin Diaz unavailable after pitching in three consecutive games, Callaway put the game in the hands of Jeurys Familia. While millions of Mets fans chewed their nails, Familia pitched a seven-pitch eighth inning to hold the line. In the bottom of the eighth, the Mets tacked on that needed insurance run courtesy of a McNeil double and a Michael Conforto single. Familia came back out in the ninth and quickly got two outs before falling apart. He issued a walk, followed by three consecutive hits to allow the Reds to tie it up. He exited the game with runners on first and third and Joey Votto stepping to the plate. LOOGY Daniel Zamora entered but walked Votto. With Seth Lugo and Diaz unavailable and Justin Wilson on the I.L., Callaway handed the ball to…Drew Gagnon with the game tied and the bases loaded. Miraculously, the young righty escaped the jam by striking out Suarez.
Any notion of a dramatic walk-off win was dashed as the Mets went down in order in the bottom of the ninth. But Gagnon held tough and kept the Reds off the board to give the Mets another shot, and in the bottom of the 10th inning, they didn’t disappoint. J.D. Davis led off with a double off Reds closer Raisel Iglesias and McNeil pushed him to third with a line drive single. Third base coach Gary Disarcina wisely played it cautious with Yasiel Puig‘s cannon arm in right field and no outs. Pete Alonso worked the count and drove the ball to the furthest corner of right field where even Puig couldn’t possibly throw out Davis as he crossed home for the walk off win. Whew!
Jacob deGrom takes the hill tomorrow as the Mets go for the series win.
So, they keep the streak alive of not losing any game where they lead after six innings.
I expect Diaz will be available tomorrow but it will be curious to see if Lugo is. If not, Gagnon may be pitching the 8th tomorrow.
Amazing how good and bad Familia can look from one batter to another. What exactly is his big pitch? A slider that often isn’t a strike? Even his fastball that tails into a righty looks so hittable. How do you bench a $10 mil/yr contract? It won’t happen but Kimbrel on a one year deal would be nice.
4 game series
First off free JD Davis! Next stop using Familia in high leverage spots for now please. Great job by Gagnon and I’d love to see him get a real shot up here I like rooting for underdogs and I really like his curve and change up. What can you say about Jeff McNeil? Dudes a hitting machine. Great job by Alonso in his last at bat shaking off some dreadful at bats earlier where he chased bad pitch after bad pitch. Great outing by Vargas as he went after a team that struggles with changeups and had his changeup working. No idea why Mickey didn’t double switch Gsellman in but anyway Robert looked terrific today.
Correction – today is game 3 of a 4-game series.
No offense, and excuse my lack of knowledge of suitable analogies, but I get the feeling that some Mets-boosters here are suffering from the equivalent of battered wife syndrome. Or at least, over optimism would be hard to deny
Perhaps I should change my screenname to K1 & K2. Interesting that before, I thought that said pitching upgrade was the Yellow Brick Road to The Big Show, paved with manna from heaven. Now, I have my doubts.
I assert Ramos is a stiff. For those of you who think he can hit, look at how dismally bad he was in 2015
Who could have imagined that as May dawned, the Metsies would be dead last in the NL in team ERA, and whose starting five would be lead by Matz at 3.68
Anybody looked at the Mets Pythagorean projection currently? According to this, they’ve been rather lucky thus far!
Jose, you don’t seem to be as chipper as you were in April. Is is wrong that we believe our pitching staff will come around? Is it wrong to expect a better Jeff Lowrie will improve the lineup over Todd Frazier? Is it wrong to look at Ramos’ more recent production of the last three years than find a prolonged slump that gave him bad numbers in a year like 2015 when not many Nationals had good performances and there was turmoil in their clubhouse all year? And as luck would have it, they are only one game out of first place!
The “moribund lefty” remark was well-done. We’ll see how much longer we have Vargy.