The New York Mets series with the Milwaukee Brewers could not have started out any worse for the Mets. Pitching and the offense were both ineffective.
Mets starter Carlos Carrasco started out well, throwing scoreless first two innings. But he gave up a run in the third inning, and two more in the fourth on a two run home run by Brian Anderson.
Carlos departed after walking his first two batters in the fifth inning. Reliever Tommy Hunter entered and the floodgates started. By the time the fifth inning ended, it was 10-0 Brewers with the biggest hit courtesy of grand slam by Brewers rookie Bryce Turang.
The only Mets highlight in this entire game, was infielder Luis Guillorme throwing a shutout in the eighth inning, with the team being down by at least 10 runs and so being eligible to throw out a position player on the mound.
Mets pitching gave up the most runs in a game this season. But the Mets offense was also shut out for the first time this season and have yet to hit their full stride.
Their top three hitters in Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil are all off to slow starts. Lindor is batting .143, Alonso .167 and McNeil at .190.
Granted it’s only five games so far with 157 games remaining. Mets starting pitching outside of Carrasco, has been solid, and the bullpen outside of Hunter today, has been splendid overall, even without Edwin Diaz.
But the offense, despite scoring at least 5 runs in the three wins over the Miami Marlins, have yet to make the same impact that they made last season so far. And it won’t get much easier with Wade Miley and ace Corbin Burnes up next to start for the Brew Crew in this series.
The Mets will look to bounce back tomorrow and they have the right man to help get their groove back in Max Scherzer starting.
It is not going to take long before there is no bullpen arms to call on. The staccato offense seems to be in the Mets DNA, but the starting pitchers need to strap open their big boy pants and start throwing 7 innings.
This is a significant problem in the making. Ive been loathe to go after pen management, but Buck has been burning arms unnecessarily. And its already showing.
It’s one game so we can move on but 10-0 is a total embarrassment.
It’s pretty weird to be on the road in one series and travel to another city and then play a game at 1:00 p.m. local time with no day off in between. I’ll credit some of the team’s lackluster effort to that weird bit of scheduling.
But Carrasco went to Milwaukee early, so he doesn’t get any slack.
It is April 4th today. Criticism of “bullpen management” has become the easiest & most common complaint by all fans across baseball. It sounds like it means something when really it doesn’t mean anything at all.
It’s early in the season and the starters aren’t stretched out — and in the case of the Mets, right now there’s really only 1 1/2 starters who might get to 7 on any regular basis.
Let’s let them play for a bit and see what happens. But right now, today, it’s not a great rotation by any means.
On Carrasco, he doesn’t look right and missed the last start of ST. He might be toughing it out in lieu of two starters already down with injury. In general, people seemed okay with retaining him at $14 million but I would have liked to have seen the club go in a different direction.
My gut at this point says that Megill is just a guy, a body, and though he’s shown flashes, isn’t really ever going to be a consistent, high-quality starter. I like Peterson, though.
All the Mets WBC hitters are under-performing, as if they are still in Spring Training. I don’t know if that’s true across MLB.