Coming into last night’s game against the Atlanta Braves, the Mets’ bullpen was really in need of a strong start from Steven Matz, as the bullpen had been overworked on Monday during the doubleheader. On top of it, Noah Syndergaard was placed on the disabled list, which forced the team to move Seth Lugo to the rotation.
Jason Vargas is pitching today on three days rest as well now, so the team really needed to get length from Matz on his birthday.
For the first three innings, everything really seemed all fine and well. The Mets offense was clicking, while Matz cruised through the Braves lineup in that span, in which he allowed only one hit and two walks to go along with two strikeouts.
In the top of the fourth inning, Matz came to the plate and even doubled, but during that at-bat, he hurt himself as Mickey Callaway explains.
“On the swing-and-miss where the bat flew over the on-deck circle, as he held onto it, he bent the pitching finger on his left hand all the way back.”
That injury caused the Mets to remove him from the game in the bottom of the inning, and replace him with Paul Sewald.
From there, we saw the effects of an overworked bullpen that probably was set up to fail.
Sewald allowed two runs in the fourth inning (one earned) to cut the Mets lead in half to 4-2. After getting through the fifth inning cleanly, the team turned to Jerry Blevins.
The 34-year old made his longest appearance of the season, going 1 2/3 innings, but allowed an RBI double to Nick Markakis in the seventh inning to cut the Mets increased lead to 6-3.
Jacob Rhame replaced him with two outs in the inning and got a first-pitch flyout to center field. However, the eighth inning would take a turn for the worst as the Braves would score a run on an RBI fielder’s choice from Preston Tucker and then score two more to tie the game on an RBI triple from Ender Inciarte that just barely stayed in the ballpark.
Rhame managed to strikeout Ozzie Albies and got Nick Markakis to pop out to end the inning, though.
In the ninth inning, Gerson Bautista was forced to enter the game and surrendered a walk0ff home run to Johan Camargo to end possibly the most dreadful night of the Mets season.
Mickey Callaway even admitted after the game that what happened with Matz today was the worst case scenario.
“Yeah, it really was. We ended up using everyone that was available today so it was tough.”
The Mets will really need to hope that Matz does not need to miss any significant amount of time as he has been their third best starter this season, statistically speaking, with a 3.55 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, and 41 strikeouts to go along with a 2-3 record in 45 2/3 innings pitched.
Matz will be getting an MRI on his left middle finger today.
