Jeremy Hefner didn’t have his best outing of the season, but was victimized by a home run and some defensive errors and the Mets offense struggled against the Nationals in their 5-3 loss on Wednesday

Game Recap

Jeremy Hefner coming off of his last outing couldn’t duplicate the same level of success today against Washington. Hefner went six innings, allowing four runs (three earned) on seven hits, walking one and striking out three. The aforementioned home run came off of the bat of Adam Laroche, and one of the runners on base was thanks to a Daniel Murphy error. While not a poor outing from Hefner, it just wasn’t as stellar as his last outing.

The bullpen was forced into some work today, and received two-thirds of an inning from Tim Byrdak, allowing a run on one hit, while walking one. Miguel Batista came out for the last inning and one-third, and allowed one hit and one strikeout while walking two. With the much welcomed news that Pedro Beato was called up, hopefully the Mets pen will not have as much heavy-lifting tomorrow as they did today.

Offensively, the Mets managed three runs on three hits the entire game, drawing five walks. Ike Davis was the only Mets player with an extra base hit. When a team manages three hits, but does score three runs it is a curious situation. Runs scored on a Kirk Nieuwenhuis RBI single in the third, an RBI groundout by Lucas Duda in the fourth and a Omar Quintinilla RBI groundout in the seventh.

Game Notes

Daniel Murphy continued his struggles both offensively and defensively, going 0 for 4 today with a strikeout, and making two more fielding errors. As the SNY broadcast mentioned, he seems to be losing focus during the transfer, and that is if he gets passed the actual catch

Josh Satin was designated for assignment to make room for Pedro Beato, while Chris Young was placed on paternity leave to allow Jason Bay to be on the roster. Once Young returns, it seems likely either Vinny Rottino or Jordany Valdespin would be heading down.

Ike Davis went 1 for 2 with two walks, a double and a run scored. By Ike’s recent standards, this is a good game.

Tim Byrdak is at 33 Games played this season – we have yet to reach the All-Star Break

No Player Of The Game today, with the second straight ugly day of baseball who honestly performed to deserve it?

On Deck

The Mets will look to salvage a game from this series, sending RHP R.A. Dickey (8-1, 2.69)to the mound to face off against the Nats and RHP Chien-Ming Wang (1-1, 6.43) at 1:05 P.M.