I don’t even want to write this up, honestly. The umpiring crew…or rather Chad Fairchild played a hand in really screwing the Mets over in this game, which was a tough loss to follow. Let’s start with the good — Wilmer Flores looked pretty damn good out there again. Flores scored in the second inning when John Buck and Omar Quintanilla strung together back-to-back RBI singles to drive home Flores and Ike Davis, respectively. That would be all the scoring the Mets could muster on the evening, but it wasn’t particularly their fault.
Mejia retired the first eight hitters without any problems and cruised through the first five without any real issues, keeping the game as 2-0. The bottom of the sixth and top of seventh innings spelt hell for the New York Mets — and I am a little disappointed that Terry Collins didn’t jump out to argue for his team, but arguing balls and strikes is a futile effort.
In the bottom of the sixth, Murphy struggled on consecutive plays, first bobbling a slow grounder to allow a runner on first and then mistiming a jump to deflect a ball off his glove into right field. Marlon Byrd didn’t field it correctly, either, and failed to pick up the force out on a surprised Carl Crawford. On the next play, a base hit towards Lagares left him ready to throw — but he went to third instead of home and the ball bounced off Flores, finally landing out of play and bringing home yet another run while advancing Adrian Gonzalez to third. He would later score on a Puig sacrifice fly, which capped off a horrendously unlucky inning for Jenrry Mejia. Mejia should have backed up Flores on the errant throw play, however, so I will admit that fault on his part. For those of you that didn’t watch, Jenrry Mejia was very, very good today — don’t let those numbers fool you. He has looked incredible so far as a starter with the Mets.
The top of the seventh saw the Mets load the bases with one out…and then the Umpires from Planet Hollywood struck. The 1B Ump, Jeff Kellogg, called an obvious check-swing as a strike, creating a 2-1 count instead of 3-0. Chad Fairchild finished up the screw-job by calling Lagares out via strikes on a pitch well outside the plate, which caused displeasure among…well, everyone but Dodgers fans. Murphy flew out to end the inning. Nick Punto homered off Carlos Torres later in the game to set up the 4-2 final score.
At least Matt Harvey is starting tomorrow…and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Flores’ sparkling diving play at third base to save a base hit. Eat your heart out, David Wright. 🙂
If anything else, the kids are alright…
