Another Rafael Montero outing, another night filled with abject frustration and disappointment.
This may sound harsh, but there is no way around it: Montero is not a major league caliber pitcher.
In a night where the Mets (for some reason) depended on Montero to secure the rubber game against the cellar dwelling San Diego Padres after choosing to push back Jacob deGrom‘s start, the results were not so surprisingly inadequate.
Montero labored his way through three innings of work, gutting out 87 pitches while surrendering three runs on five hits as well as issuing three free passes. 45 of those pitches came in the first inning when eight Padres came to the dish.
His ERA for the season ballooned to 8.24 (10.80 while starting) and his record dropped to 0-4. Montero is 1-5 with a 5.29 ERA (39 earned runs over 66 1/3 innings) in 14 career starts.
“That’s what we have been fighting with [Montero], to have confidence in his stuff to throw it over the plate,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “When he does he can get outs. But deep counts, base on balls in the first inning, he’s just fortunate he limited the damage to what he did.”
And what else is Collins to say? Another mediocre outing that was less destructive than usual. “Progress.”
Thankfully for Collins and the Mets, it was Paul Sewald and Josh Edgin that gave the Mets a chance to win and remain in this ballgame, after the bullpen was forced yet again to log a copious amount of innings.
Sewald hurled three scoreless innings with four strikeouts in relief of Montero.
The 27-year-old has allowed two runs in his last 17.0 innings (1.06 ERA) and has 19 strikeouts in his last 13.0 innings.
Josh Edgin, who has become one of the strongest links in an overall ragtag bunch followed suit with two scoreless innings of his own to drop his season ERA to 2.78.
“They did a nice job, both guys. Paul got a little fatigued, but that’s the first time Edgin has gone multiple innings in a long time,’’ Collins said. “We said before the game that’s what we thought we were going to have to do, and they gave us a chance.”
Closer Addison Reed allowed the eventual winning run in the ninth inning on a double from Cory Spangenberg, but the results could have been far worse as Sewald and Edgin were able to prevent this game from being a blowout or to have gotten out of hand rather quickly like we have seen far too often this season.
As for Montero, we will see how many lives this cat will live through: nine or 900?
