3 UP

1. Dominic Smith Rebounds 

At this point, we should not be surprised when Dominic Smith overcomes adversity. Coming into this season, he overcame struggling in parts of two Major League seasons, being surpassed on the depth chart, and health issues like sleep apnea. Seeing all that, we should have expected his big game on Saturday.

On the very first pitch he saw after his misplay helped cost the Mets a game, he would homer. In that game, Smith was 3-for-5 with a homer and four RBI.

These two games encapsulated the progress Smith has made this year and in his career. They evidence how Smith has the ability to pick himself off the mat and continue to surprise us. It shows we should never count him out.

2. Terrific Pitching

The Mets starters in this series allowed just four earned over 25.0 innings pitched (1.44 ERA). Remarkably, that includes a Walker Lockett start. It also included a Steven Matz start with Matz looking the best he has in months.

The Mets bullpen allowed seven runs over 38.0 innings pitched (1.66 ERA). That’s all the more impressive when you consider Stephen Nogosek gave up three meaningless runs in the Mets blowout win on Saturday.

The Mets pitching absolutely did their job this past weekend, and they’ve done their job well since the All-Star Break. Even with the offense went completely missing in action, they kept the Mets alive.

3. Rosario’s Improved Defense

Rosario entered the break as the worst defender in the majors with a -16 DRS. He’s had a 1 DRS since the break, and he hasn’t made an error over his last 16 games.

This is in stark contrast to the defender he was who had not played well at all since the start of the 2018 season forcing the Mets to publicly consider moving him to CF.

With his recent play at short, as well as his improved hitting, Rosario is looking once again like the shortstop of the future.

3 DOWN

1. The Play

If you want a play which perfectly encapsulates the Mets season, look no further than Friday’s walk-off loss.

Like we saw happen last year in a game against the Giants, Dominic Smith was gun shy when Amed Rosario came out to try to make a play. Once again, a catchable ball fell due to Smith’s discomfort and inexperience. Of course, that could’ve been addressed if the Mets worked Smith out in left during Spring Training like he requested, but the Mets be only prepared him to play first base.

On that play, Todd Frazier astutely cut off the Smith throw and made the throw home well ahead of Alex Dickerson, who was busting it from first. The veteran catcher Wilson Ramos was out of position and did not anticipate the throw to be cut off. As a result, he was out of position. Worse yet, he didn’t try to get back.

On that one play, we saw the consequences of playing people out of position, building a poor defensive club, and paying for players on the downside of their careers. In a nutshell, that’s the 2019 Mets.

2. Offensive Droughts

In the first inning of this series, the Mets scored a run when Pete Alonso grounded into a double play. The Mets wouldn’t score another run until 15 innings later.

Then, they wouldn’t score a run in a 10 inning loss the next night. That’s two runs over 26 innings.

After an offensive outburst on Saturday, the bats went cold again. After Michael Conforto and Amed Rosario hit a pair of second inning solo homers, the Mets would not score another run in the Mets 11 inning loss.

When you can’t muster runs, you’re not going to win games. More than that, it just seems when the Mets are pitching, they’re not hitting, and vice versa. If nothing else, this makes the Mets exceedingly frustrating to follow.

3. Blown Opportunity

As previously detailed, the Mets schedule set things up for the team to not just go on a run, but also make headway against teams ahead of them in the Wild Card standings.

Instead of taking three out of four from a Giants team who frankly isn’t that good and didn’t play well, the Mets blew it losing three extra inning games.

Not only should the Mets have won this series, truth be told, they should have swept the Giants knocking them out of the Wild Card race. Instead, the Mets are nine games under .500 and seven games out of the Wild Card.