The Mets (29-25) fell 7-3 to the Padres (27-28) on Wednesday night in San Diego.
Dillon Gee fired blanks in his return from the Disabled List, allowing seven runs (four earned) on eight hits and a walk in four innings, striking out one.
The Mets had their chances against James Shields, but didn’t take advantage. After New York squandered a pair of baserunners in the top of the first, San Diego scored a pair in the home half against Gee on a Ruben Tejada error, a walk, a single, a hit batsman, and a sacrifice fly. The Mets again failed to score in the second when Darrell Ceciliani hit a ground-rule double leading off the frame, but was thrown out trying to tag up on the next play.
Gee danced around Tejada’s second error in the third inning, but the Friars got three hits in the fourth to plate a pair and take a 4-0 lead. Three more hits and some sloppy defense (including an error on Gee) led to three more runs in the fifth, and Gee was pulled before getting an out in the inning, ending his streak of 51 straight starts going at least 5 innings.
After Jack Leathersich came in and cleaned up Gee’s mess, the Mets got on the board in the next inning with a double from Ruben Tejada, cutting the Padre lead to 7-1. New York could have made a larger dent in the deficit, but Daniel Murphy hit into a double-play with runners on the corners to shield James from further damage.
Erik Goeddel tossed a scoreless bottom of the sixth, and the Mets clawed back for another run in the top of the seventh on an RBI single from Anthony Recker. But once again, a double-play killed the visitors’ chances of making things close— this time the culprit was the ice-cold Eric Campbell.
Sean Gilmartin cruised through the seventh for the first of his two perfect innings of work, but the Mets once again wasted bullets baserunners in the top of the eighth, forcing them to face superstar closer Craig Kimbrel needing five runs in the ninth.
New York actually made things interesting against Kimbrel. After Kimbrel got two quick outs, Anthony Recker lined one that somehow found its way past an erring Will Middlebrooks, and Kevin Plawecki doubled him home. Curtis Granderson walked, and Ruben Tejada singled to load the bases and bring Lucas Duda to the plate as the tying run. Duda watched two pitches well out of the zone, but Kimbrel got two borderline calls to even the count, and then got Duda to ground out to end the ballgame.
Well, that was a lousy game, but it got a bit exciting at the end. I thought the umpire kind of screwed Duda there with those calls on 2-0 and 2-1, and prevented Kimbrel from needing to throw a meatball later in the at-bat. Oh well.
Tejada had a rough day in the field, but he really has been terrific at the plate lately. Who saw that coming?
Gee had some bad luck tonight, but he also looked pretty awful. I’m sure Joe and the rest of his MMO army will have some more fleshed-out thoughts about Gee, the six-man rotation, Matz, etc. coming up for you tomorrow (or later today, if you’re reading this in the morning like a sane person who went to bed before the 27th out), but for now, I’ll say that if the Mets are going to do this, they better be confident they have six pitchers who can (and will) pitch like major leaguers.
This team really has not been good on the road this season. It’s not like they have a raucous crowd which provides a massive home-field advantage, or a team perfectly tailored to their home ballpark. So it’s hard to say why this is the case. But it needs to change.
I’m not sure why, but the Mets have always looked good against Kimbrel. Now if we can hit the many, many far inferior pitchers who throw more than one inning a game, we should be in good shape.
Up Next: The Mets will begin a four-game set against the Diamondbacks in Arizona on Thursday night at Chase Field. Matt Harvey (5-3, 3.11 ERA) will return to the scene of his MLB debut and face Jeremy Hellickson (3-3, 5.08 ERA).
