It was supposed to be our chance to make a statement. On Thursday I called it the first must win series of the season. But instead of riding high this weekend, the Mets lost three of four to the Washington Nationals and we dropped our third consecutive series while losing seven of our last 10 in the process.
This one really smarts because it came against our chief divisional rival and it happened at home. This was the season when we were supposed to stop the Nats from pushing us around.
When your starting pitching posts a 1.85 ERA in a four-game series, you’re supposed to come away with at least three wins, perhaps two in a worst case scenario.
Dillon Gee allowed just one earned run in 5.0 innings of work on Sunday and despite an uncharacteristic five walks, he struck out five and deserved a better fate.
Jon Niese was even better pitching seven solid innings and holding the Nats to just one run. But his strong performance was also squandered and Niese suffered the loss. He is 2-2 with a 2.40 ERA.
If not for Matt Harvey (5-0), who kept the Nats off the scoreboard on Friday with a five-hit gem, I shudder to think how much worse things might be.
So where did it all go wrong this weekend? Don’t blame the bullpen which was absolutely outstanding after a rough road trip. They combined for a 2.32 ERA and walked just two with 13 strikeouts in 11.2 innings pitched in the series.
Jeurys Familia picked up his tenth save of the season, a five-out showcase of lethal domination, and how about Alex Torres on Sunday? He inherits the bases loaded with nobody out in the sixth and then strikes out three in a row to escape the jam. It was sweet and for a second I thought we might actually ride that momentum and win the game, but it wasn’t meant to be.
So how did we screw this up? An impotent offense and sloppy and appalling defense.
The Mets were 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position on Sunday and hit .174 (4-for-23) in the series.
Aside from Juan Lagares who went 7-for-15 in the four-game set with a walk the rest of the lineup was flat – dead as a door nail. On Friday and Saturday the Mets lineup had only two hitters batting higher than .238 – Lagares and Lucas Duda.
Terry Collins credited the Nationals’ pitching staff – a staff we’ll be facing 12 more times this season.
“When they got Max Scherzer, people were wrapping up the World Series trophy and sending it to Washington,” said Collins. “That kind of tells you about the type of pitching staff they have. But on the same token, we haven’t hit the ball over the last 10 games like we can or like we should.”
Michael Cuddyer, who batted 2-for-14 but did hit a big home run, blamed it on the team failing to get that big hit, and I would agree with him. “When we were winning games last week, we were getting the big hit.”
The middle infield defense hasn’t helped matters and ironically Ruben Tejada flubbed a double play filling in for Wilmer Flores and Daniel Murphy missed turning a potential DP at third as well. If these two teams are going to continue to play these tight games, we need to step up on defense.
The bottom line is that this was a regrettable series that exposed several areas of concern for the Mets. The good news is that the Mets are still in first place even though their lead has shrunk to 3.5 games. Even more good news is the Mets are off Monday and Thursday, and believe me, they look like they could use the rest.
The bad news is that the Nationals continue to own the Mets at Citi and that is totally unacceptable. They’ve now won 17 of the last 19 games against us at Citi Field.
Luckily we wont have to worry about the Nationals again until July. And as long as we continue to pitch as well as we have the Mets should continue to win a lot more games than we lose.
Our offense ran into a buzz saw against some great starting pitching. I do believe we’ll get back on track when the Baltimore Orioles come in for a quick two-game set on Tuesday. Then we head to Philadelphia for the weekend and David Wright is expected to be back for that series. That will provide a big jolt for the lineup and the Mets will return to their winning ways.
My biggest concern remains the infield defense. We’ve seen first hand how it could be the difference between winning and losing. It sounds like Sandy Alderson still wants to stay the course with Flores and hopefully the three days off will help. We’ll soon find out if it did. Fingers crossed.
