Another dismal day for the offense had the Mets getting shut out, 2-0, by the Tigers Thursday afternoon in Detroit. The loss meant they got swept by a second division club. It also dropped the club’s record to 16-16 on the season. It seems a lifetime ago when they were 14-7.
It may not be fair to entirely blame the offense. Eduardo Rodriguez is a good pitcher and he was definitely on his game today. He hurled eight shutout innings, allowed just one walk and two hits and fanned nine.
Meanwhile, Justin Verlander made his Mets debut. It got off to a rocky start, as he gave up back-to-back homers to the second and third batters he faced. But he settled in and did not allow another run while pitching five innings.
Once again, the bullpen did its job, with Jeff Brigham, newly acquired Dominic Leone and Drew Smith all pitching a scoreless inning. But they say it’s tough to win when you don’t score any runs. After scoring one run in Wednesday night’s game, the Mets have gone 18 straight innings with lifeless offense.
Perhaps leaving Detroit and returning to Citi Field will be just what the doctor ordered for the Mets’ bats.
I hope going back to Citi Field will put a charge into the Mets. 16-16 is not good, going 2-9 in the last 11 games, ouch. Really disappointing to get swept by a bad team.
especially when 6 of those 11 games were against the Nats and Tigers who we went 1-5 against. What? Sure does seem like a lifetime ago that we were thinking about winning 3 of 4 from the Giants and finishing the west coast swing 8-2. Club needs a spark. We’ve already made the move to youngsters at two of our positions most lacking in production. Would Vientos be an upgrade over Pham if he’s only getting 8-10 ABs a week? Would Mauricio be an upgrade over Canha/Guillorme? Boy, what a conundrum.
Mauricio is deserving and Canha /Guillorme are not lighting up a fire for the offense. Your suggestion is a real possibility.
I know we need pitching first, but at stage of the season, the Mets should bring up Vientos and Mauricio. Give the fans something to get excited about, because this season will go down as another of great disappointment in the history of this franchise. I for one would write off the season and play the youngsters…..sell off veterans like Marte, Canha and Escobar to contending teams and stock up on young starting pitchers from the minor leagues of those teams.
Of course, that’s not going to happen.
Nobody in management is going to admit that this bloated payroll of a team; cobbled together by them; was a mistake. Again, why can other organization do so much better with less $$$?
With a 16-16 record and 80% of the season left , I’m not going to count the season out. Even if you trade the three veterans you’re not going to stock your minor league pitching. They are not Carlos Beltran and the Mets are not going to get a Zack Wheeler. 80% of the starting pitching rotation was on the IL/ suspended in April and May and they still went 8-2 on the west coast trip. The rough times are disappointing and concerning but get off the ledge and have faith in the process.
No way writing off this season but it’s been disappointing of late. And yes, it’s fair that good pitching holds down good hitting and you still lose 60 times in a great season. But getting swept by the Tigers sucks. If Mauricio can play 2B than bring him up and move McNeil to left and Canha to the bench. . Does Vientos really have no position he can play or can he play a few games in the field and then DH? Time to shake things up a bit. Bring on the 12-20 Rockies.
Early in the year the narrative was that the team was winning despite all the SP woes. Well of course that was a mirage as data shows it’s really hard to win with crappy SP, so the last 10ish games regression should be no surprise to anyone.
The starters have a 5.56 ERA / 6.01 FIP, yet nearly all the recent comments seem to be about the hitting prospects. I don’t know how that is going to fix the pitching problem.
I couldnt agree more Name. Right from early on, my concern was not good enough or long enough from starting pitching. Well more than a month into the season and the starters still remain not good enough *and* not pitching long enough. The pen has been pretty remarkable, but Phase II of the shambolic pitching is the accelerated wearing down of pen arms. Its a story we’ve seen before, many many times.
As far as the money goes, it does show that all the concerns from the poor owners, like the Pirates and Rays, that the bloated unconstrained spending of Cohen does not automatically buy anything.