As it turns out, it didn’t matter who was in the lineup for the Mets.
Coming off a start in which he threw 121 pitches, Bartolo Colon was entirely ineffective against the Giants’ offense, allowing eight hits, two home runs and six runs over just 4.2 innings of work.
Hunter Pence, batting .108 in his last nine games, blasted a pair of homers as part of a 3-for-4 afternoon, the 10th multi-homer game of his career. Brandon Belt also took Colon deep in the fourth on a fly ball that just barely stayed inside the right field foul pole.
“Today he just really didn’t have his good stuff,” Terry Collins said.
The six runs were the most Colon has surrender in a home start since he gave up six on May 26, 2012 against the Yankees as a member of the Oakland Athletics.
Buddy Carlyle had mop-up duty after Colon exited and pitched 1.1 innings of scoreless relief, lowering his ERA to 0.87. Buster Posey went 4-for-5 with a two-run blast off of Carlos Torres, his 13th of the season.
Madison Bumgarner stymied the Mets offense over nine frames, earning his second career shutout. The 25-year-old faced just two over the minimum, walking only one and surrendering just two hits while punching out 10. In effort to get more right-handed bats in the lineup, Daniel Murphy and Lucas Duda had the day off. Travis d’Arnaud also sat in favor of Anthony Recker.
No matter who was in the lineup; however, the Giants series has been one to forget for the Mets offense. Along with Ryan Vogelsong‘s two-hitter on Friday, this is only the third time in franchise history that the Mets have had two complete-game two-hitters or better against them in a series. Both previous occurrences involved Sandy Koufax, the first in May of 1963 and the second in June of 1965.
“Obviously we’re not putting very good swings on balls we can handle,” Collins said.
Bumgarner now improves to 3-0 with a 1.24 ERA in four career outings against the Mets.
The four-game home series wraps up Monday at 12:10 p.m. as the Mets will send Dillon Gee to the mound, squaring off against Tim Hudson, who makes his first start at Citi Field since suffering a season-ending ankle injury on a collision with Eric Young Jr. at first on July 24, 2013. The Mets will hope to avoid their first home series loss since June 10-12 when they lost two-of-three to the Milwaukee Brewers.
