After a strong outing against the Padres, the middle innings came back to haunt Matt Harvey again, making for a miserable 5-2 loss for the Mets at Colorado’s cavernous Coors Field.
The Mets bats that were muted by Clayton Kershaw on Thursday, barely made a peep off of Rockies rookie right-hander, Jon Gray, who unlike Harvey, found good fortune on Friday the 13th.
In his 14th career start, Gray finally got his elusive first major league victory, giving up 2 runs and 5 hits over 7 innings of 8 strike out ball – topped off with his first big league base hit to boot.
Gray’s 105 pitch performance snapped an 11 game Rockies losing skid to the Mets. It also puts the Amazins in second place behind the Washington Nationals, who the Mets will host at Citi Field for a crucial three game series that starts Tuesday.
Harvey’s ineffectiveness is cause for concern, and although he and Terry Collins claim that last year’s workload is not to blame, there is something amiss in the arm and mind of his former ace.
The velocity on his fastball last night was well, about 3-4 mph from where it should be, and his secondary pitches are more erratic than the stock market. It’s uncanny how he looks so good early in a game and then just peters out come the fourth and fifth innings.
With Jacob deGrom’s shaky outing, Colon’s colossal loss, and Steven Matz’s visit with the doctor on the docket, the touted top pitching staff has made the natives restless lately, and the starting lineup is doing a poor job patching it up when the ball stays in the park.
Granderson is batting .206, David Wright .223, Duda .235, and Neil Walker, who momentarily made us forget about Daniel Murphy, has lost his mojo at the plate of late.
Kevin Plawecki has heeded Terry Collins’ call to be more productive, but when your number one and two hitters whiff a combined five times, and your starting pitcher in a previous game accounts for all of your runs, there’s something seriously wrong in Mudville, and let’s hope the Mets figure it out before they face the Nationals in their first critical matchup of the season.
As of now, Noah Syndergaard, Bartolo Colon and Matt Harvey are slated to start against the Nationals, while they counter with Max Scherzer, Gio Gonzalez and now Stephen Strasburg.
Nats manager Dusty Baker has moved Strasburg’s start this weekend from Sunday to tonight so that he can pitch in Thursday’s finale against the Mets.
