2 days ago
No Positive Momentum And No Answers For The Slumping New York Mets
For three innings Wednesday night, the Mets finally appeared to be building some positive momentum.
Despite a 95-minute rain delay, the Mets and the hardy souls amongst the announced crowd of 38,647 all picked up where they left off Tuesday, when Pete Alonso's record-setting night helped end an eight-game losing streak and generated the type of good vibes that have been lacking at Citi Field throughout the Mets' two-month nosedive.
Alonso was showered with a standing ovation prior to his first at-bat, when he ripped a two-RBI single to open the first of consecutive three-run outbursts against former teammate Carlos Carrasco. The Mets' de facto ace, David Peterson, was on the mound.
Braves manager Brian Snitker feared he'd have to ask infielder Luke Williams, who got the last four outs Tuesday, to pitch again. Another pitcher with an ERA with an ERA north of 6.00, Bryce Elder, awaited in Thursday's series finale. The Mets were going to sweep the Braves and pull their season back from the brink.
Oh well, maybe the Mets will sweep the Braves next week (but probably not).
And with each day this slump deepens, it looks less likely the Mets are ever going to figure out a way to salvage a season that began with such magical promise.
Ozzie Albies did his best Chipper Jones/Freddie Freeman impersonation last night, when he hit the go-ahead run-scoring double to cap a three-RBI night and lift the fourth-place Braves to a 4-3 win. It was the second straight comeback win for Atlanta, which climbed out of the six-run hole Wednesday by scoring nine runs (how many runs?) in the fourth inning of an 11-6 victory.
The consecutive losses dropped the Mets to 2-13 since July 28 and left them on the verge of falling out of the playoff picture. The Mets, who led the majors with a 45-24 record through June 12, are just a half-game ahead of the Reds in the race for the last NL wild card berth.
'We haven't played well but we're still pretty much right in the thick of things,' Carlos Mendoza said.
As far as bright sides go, that's a pretty dim one. And it could have been worse and likely will get worse for the Mets, who are accustomed to such expressions of pessimistic optimism. The Mets flirted with disaster Tuesday, when they blew a four-run lead before Brandon Nimmo's three-run homer snapped a tie in a 13-5 win.
The Mets lost the series despite a long-awaited breakthrough for their top five batters. Alonso, Nimmo, Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto and Jeff McNeil hit a combined .356 with five homers and 14 RBIs against the Braves. They had all six of the team's hits Thursday.
What will the Mets do to get right now that they're not facing a team sending Quad-A hurlers to the mound? Carrasco was designated for assignment hours before Elder went more than six innings for just the fourth time this season. Then again, all four of those outings have come since June 7 for Elder, which would make him the no. 2 starter for the Mets, who last had a pitcher not named David Peterson last six innings on…June 7.
Peterson, Clay Holmes, Sean Manaea and Kodai Senga have combined to throw 389 innings this season — fewer than 20 more than Luis Castillo, Bryan Woo and George Kirby have tossed this season entering their scheduled starts against the Mets this weekend.
Perhaps the Mets will get a spark and a lengthy start from Nolan McLean, who will be recalled from Triple-A Syracuse to make his big league debut by taking Frankie Montas' spot in the rotation Saturday.
If not, Montas will probably get to add to this sobering Mets stat: Their mop-up men — Justin Hagenman and Paul Blackburn — have allowed two runs in 12 innings this month while set-up men Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers and Gregory Soto, all of whom were acquired to shore up the bullpen at the trade deadline, have surrendered eight runs (four earned) over 17 1/3 innings since Aug. 1.
'We just haven't been able to put everything together,' Mendoza said. 'Whenever we're getting the offense, we're not getting starting pitching. Today we got starting pitching, we got some timely hitting — even though we didn't create much traffic — but then we couldn't close it out.'
And now the Mets are this close to authoring a bigger collapse than anything the 2007 or 2008 team ever could have imagined. The best-case scenario is this is another retooling of the story told in 1999, when the Mets overcame seven- and eight-game losing streaks to squeak into the playoffs and make the NLCS.
Regardless, this won't be the season that goes down in Mets history as the one in which they simply became a boring good team. Maybe next year (but probably not).
