The Mets entered this two-week stretch against the Dodgers and Giants not exactly firing on all cylinders. And they lost seven one-run games. It’s hard to wrap your head around it. But they consistently fall behind, they can’t buy a hit with RISP and the manager makes sub-optimal decisions. It’s not a winning formula.
Thursday night the Giants put up two runs in the first inning to once again put the Mets in an early hole. They battled back to tie it on a Pete Alonso home run. But the Giants scored a run against the Mets’ pen in the eighth inning and that was all she wrote, as San Francisco walked away with a 3-2 win and a sweep of the three-game series.
Carlos Carrasco was terrific after falling behind by two runs after the first three batters of the game. He finished his night with 7 IP and 2 ER and a pitch count low enough that he could have come back for the eighth inning if they hadn’t pinch hit for him in the bottom of the seventh.
Luis Rojas had a tough decision to make with which reliever to use. Jeurys Familia was the most-rested option, having not pitched in the previous three days. But Familia’s not very good so it’s hard to blame Rojas for looking elsewhere. Miguel Castro didn’t pitch Wednesday but had thrown 35 pitches on Tuesday. Aaron Loup, Seth Lugo and Trevor May had all pitched last night. Rojas opted for Lugo and he faced three batters and didn’t record an out. He left with one run in and two on base. Loup walked a batter to load the bases but got out of the inning without allowing a run to score.
The Mets loaded the bases in their half of the eighth. With a tiring RHP on the mound, the Giants scrambled to get a reliever ready, with lefty Jose Alvarez hurriedly trying to get warm. Patrick Mazeika, who had five hits in his last 32 ABs, was the next hitter.
Rojas had an option to send up either Jeff McNeil or J.D. Davis. McNeil has a .676 OPS this year and that mark is 101 points lower against LHP. Davis has an .853 OPS. Rojas sent up McNeil and the Giants brought in Alvarez. And this is a good time to mention that Alvarez faced McNeil with the bases loaded on Wednesday and got him to pop up to second base. Alvarez got McNeil to ground out to short to end the threat on Thursday.
May pitched a scoreless ninth inning. The pitcher’s spot was due up for the Mets so they used Davis to pinch hit. But now the Giants had righty submariner Tyler Rogers pitching.
The Mets actively seek chances to get Loup in the game with the platoon advantage. Playing matchups is a big thing for the Mets on defense. Just not so much when they have the bats in their hand. And one last infuriating thing. Rojas sent McNeil to the plate with the bases loaded while McNeil has a .506 OPS with RISP this year. Davis has an .874 mark with RISP.
I’m watching the game while participating in the Game Chatter with Name and Chris, playing two games of online Scrabble and bidding in multiple Facebook auctions. And I knew that picking McNeil over Davis was a mistake. How on earth does Rojas make that decision, with his complete focus on the game and coaches available to bounce ideas off all around him?
Picking Lugo to pitch the 8th was a defensible choice that simply didn’t work. But there was no justification for using McNeil over Davis as a pinch-hitter against a lefty who had just eaten him up the day before. It’s really tough to hit 95 mph fastballs and wicked breaking pitches. It shouldn’t be so tough to use the correct pinch hitter in the eighth inning with the game on the line.
Clearly the decision not to hit D against the lefty in the eighth was the whole game, at that point. But let’s face it, the Mets just don’t hit. Every single inning they squander baserunners because they fail to square up hittable pitches. Every pitching staff makes errors and leave balls in hittable spots during certain at bats, but the Mets don’t hit them.
This team has some serious soul searching to do.
+1
Ha, I was also playing online scrabble!
One thought, upon seeing Lugo’s lower velocity in this game: Can’t they tell that he’s off when he’s warming up in the bullpen? Get someone else warmed up then. No?
Yeah, the pinch-hitting decisions by Rojas are head scratching sometimes.
Carrasco was terrific. He had five pitches working well and issued no walks. A real positive! And you gotta love Alonso’s power! What a shot down the LF line!
Same old same old. Non-dominant pitcher Mets can’t hit, in this case Wood throwing multiple low 90s fastballs by Met hitters, many in hitter counts. The manager, GM, stat dept, they aren’t in the batter’s box.
The Braves, man, their fans should thank their lucky stars. They get a very rare two consecutive weekdays off, in pennant race time, sit back at home and gain multiple games in the loss column over both the hapless Mets and the hapless Phillies.
Who could ever forget that superstar Chris Heston, a fellow SF Giant who came into NY as a no-big-deal rookie and then managed to toss a no hitter against the Mets in 2015. Reminds me of those future HoFers Sonny Long and Alex Wood that just buzzed through us. And what about Heston, well bbref says he played 4 seasons in pros, but in fact only pitched more than 10 innings (yes, ten), one time in a season. That happened in 2015 – the Mets have made terrible pitchers look good for a looooooong time.
Something is wrong.
Fire Alderson.
Gut Reaction: They can’t score enough runs because they can’t hit with RISP.
In the bottom of the 8th the game was on the line and Davis was the sensible choice to pinch hit for McNeil. The analytics supports it. It was a poor choice by Rojas.
To lose seven one run games is a travesty and the hitting is primary culprit but these decisions by the manager compound the problem.