It hasn’t been a great year so far for Yu Darvish but the veteran hurler owned the Mets Tuesday night, as he allowed just two hits over seven shutout innings, to lead the Padres to a 7-0 win over the Mets, which evened the series at a game apiece.
Taijuan Walker allowed four runs in the first two innings and that was more than enough for Darvish, who in seven career games against the Mets is 4-0 with a 2.76 ERA.
The Mets go for the series win Wednesday with Chris Bassitt on the hill.
Back in the 1990’s when Pedro Martinez was hitting batters left and right, the Red Sox hitters were getting hit too. They eventually confronted Martinez and told him to cut it out and while he didn’t like it, he had no choice. I didn’t see any of the game except the hit by pitch, but I saw in the box score that three of our guys got hit and none of theirs. If we can get the pitchers to worry about hitting us, that plays into our advantage; they stop pitching inside for instance. Right now, pitchers don’t care and are just letting rip. Machado needs to get drilled. The Mets have to do something and this Mother Theresa stance isn’t fixing anything. Darrell Strawberry who is now a preacher, said a month ago that someone needs to charge the mound. What are they waiting for?
Nimmo and McNeil were barely touched, but Alonso is clearly bearing the brunt of this issue. Hit twice in the head already, and several more on the arms and hands… there may be some substance to this strategy. Time for Tylor Megill to emerge, with his 6-7 body and 98 mph… drill somebody early in a series and make a difference.
A disappointing game all around. Contrary to Keith H, good pitching will stop good hitting every time, and Yu had it going. The jury is still out on a few things for me:
1. Who is Taijuan Walker? I don’t see the same pitcher every outing.
2. Can Marte slide into second base like a normal player? He had that base stolen, as he has beaten the throws before. Now he’s got a quad issue.
3. What’s the bullpen coach for? Besides eating pizza out there (he doesn’t look like a coach of athletes), isn’t a guy supposed to be ready to throw strikes when he enters a game? Holderman crashed last night… makes us lose faith in him.
4. Who are our true reliable bullpen arms? Lugo, Smith, Shreve, Ottavino have all gone AWOL at sometime… but for different reasons. Buck has to figure out which reasons are correctable and which are personnel issues.