The Mets (36-36) fell 3-2 to the Brewers (26-46) on Tuesday night in Milwaukee.
Jon Niese pitched pretty well for the Mets, skating around eight hits, three walks and a hit batsman to throw six innings of two-run ball, striking out three.
The Brewers scored a run in the bottom of the first with a string of two-out hits, but the Mets evened it against Mike Fiers in the top of the third on Curtis Granderson‘s solo shot. New York took the lead in the fourth when Wilmer Flores walked, moved to second on a groundout, advanced to third on a wild pitch, and scored on Kevin Plawecki‘s sacrifice fly.
Milwaukee tied it up in the bottom of the sixth with some help from Dilson Herrera, who couldn’t make a clean play on a throw from Kevin Plawecki which would have easily gotten a stealing Gerardo Parra (who later scored).
Hansel Robles came in for Niese to start the seventh and struck out Ryan Braun, before walking Carlos Gomez and being replaced by Sean Gilmartin. The lefty allowed a double down the left-field line to Adam Lind. As Gomez headed to third, the ball bounced off the left-field wall and straight through Michael Cuddyer‘s legs, allowing Gomez to score what would ultimately be the game-winning run.
Bobby Parnell pitched 1.1 strong innings for the Mets, but the team could not rally and dropped its sixth straight, falling to the .500 mark on the season.
I’m not going to dive too deeply into this dreadful loss, but it really feels like the 2009-2014 Mets are back in full force. This team has lost as many games as it has won, and needs to get back to playing April baseball— not just “pretty good” baseball— if they want to even entertain thoughts of playing in October. And with their best hitters dropping like flies— Travis d’Arnaud is the latest key hitter who looks like he might be out for awhile— it might be time to really turn our thoughts to 2016.
I will say one thing about the disaster in the outfield… that ball rolled pretty slowly to the wall, then seemed to take a much harder bounce than it should have. The play wasn’t as pathetic on Cuddyer’s part as it looked. But it sure was bad, and it sure was frustrating.
Tomorrow’s game is an absolute must-win. This team cannot fall under 500 and hope to maintain the respectability it gained early in the year, no matter how close they are to first place in their weak division.
Up Next: The Mets will continue their series with the Brewers on Wednesday night. Bartolo Colon (9-5, 4.81 ERA) will face Jimmy Nelson (3-8, 4.64 ERA) at 8:10 PM.
