The Mets’ offense clubbed four homers but it wasn’t enough, as the Blue Jays emerged with a 6-4 victory and finished with a sweep of the Mets Sunday afternoon at Citi Field.
The story coming into the game was the first outing by Kodai Senga on four-days rest. Perhaps because of that – are perhaps not – Senga did not have the command that he did last time out against the Phillies. He didn’t even make it out of the third inning and put the Mets in an early 4-0 hole.
But the Mets used solo homers to climb back into the game and forge a tie. Tommy Pham continued his HR barge against LHP by belting two solo shots. He was joined by Pete Alonso and Starling Marte, with the latter also breaking out of his power funk by contributing a double, which really should have been a triple but was demoted in rank because the ball got stuck under the outfield wall. There’s likely a reason why the wall has a big enough area for a ball to get underneath it. Couldn’t tell you why it is, though.
With Senga’s early exit, Buck Showalter had to call on his back-end relievers. Stephen Nogosek was terrific with three scoreless innings, which allowed the Mets to tie the game. Dominic Leone, was not, as right after the Mets knotted the game up, he allowed a two-run homer that finished the scoring.
After an off day Monday, the Mets begin a three-game series with the Braves. Hopefully the HR outburst today is a harbinger of offense to come in Atlanta.
They are five games behind the Braves. They cant fall further back. Time for a big series win.
Gut Reaction: it was a disappointing and lost weekend. Senga pitched horribly and had no command.
Pham, Canha, Marte and Escobar are reviving their seasons. The four of them should start and ride the hot hands. Baty, Vogelbach, Nido and Vientos should sit.
Lindor should have been sitting this game. He is so messed up and Buck would have spared him the boo birds in Citi and clear his head for the road trip.
Agree with most of this, but don’t think Vientos has had enough at bats. Play him for a week against all pitching, Buck!
I keep thinking that Lindor’s defense has great value and it’s true. But he seems so unexplainably lost at the plate. Too bad we don’t have a back up SS on the roster(#free Mauricio) to give him a spell but still have someone to field the position. I guess giving Nimmo a breather was Phamtastic. Being a Mets fan is hard. We scored 6 runs in three games. We got swept and I can’t even whine about Vogelbach. Keep the Faith
At least we have Carrasco, Scherzer and Verlander going against Atlanta. Two out three would be great. If we get swept here we will be eight games out, ouch.
Early in June is way too early to be concerned with the GB number because there is ample time to move the needle. But it is worth noting *at the present pace of play* it could be August or September to make up the ground for the GB, with a key decision about buy/sell/hold coming after the ASB. So for sure the Braves are thinking, we can step on the Mets neck and make this a demoralizing situation by sweeping this series. Im happy we have the top of the rotation coming, but sadly Im sure it’s not ringing fear in any of the Braves lineup. Surprisingly enough the Braves are less good at home v away, but they have a +63 run diff, whereas the Mets are at -12. Scoring runs is hard enough, scoring runs in ATL can be particularly difficult.
Right now the Mets are a team “on the bubble” IMO. There looks to be enough talent to make a solid post season run, but at the same time, so far, this experiment in top-dollar win-now baseball, has not lived up to the hype on any front — and is even at a cross roads for coming unglued.
Whenever you evaluate a plan when things didn’t go the way you expected, you have to differentiate between inherent flaws in the plan – that may or may not have been knowable at the time – and things that worked out in a way that no one could have reasonably predicted.
It’s certainly fair to criticize the plan for relying so heavily on old pitchers, because old pitchers get hurt. I liked that part of the plan and I still believe at the end of the season the SP will be fine.
It’s certainly fair to criticize the plan to have three relief pitchers who were chosen because of their option status rather than their talent status. I’ve complained about this since before the start of the season.
It’s not fair to criticize the plan when every non-rookie returning hitter is performing worse than a season ago.
Alonso – 146 OPS+ in 2022, 135 in 2023
McNeil – 140 to 100
Vogelbach – 139 to 90
Marte – 132 to 82
Nimmo – 130 to 123
Lindor – 125 to 89
Canha – 122 to 103
Escobar – 106 to 90
Guillorme – 101 to 68
Nido – 72 to (-21)
And while some decline would have been reasonable to expect from some, if not most, of these players, a drop of 37-50 points of OPS+ from Lindor, Marte, McNeil and Vogelbach was not something that anyone was predicting. It’s hard to pull off a win-now plan when your returning hitters – many of them All-Stars – are performing this poorly.