Another Depressing Mets Day
Not even Jacob deGrom would stem the losing streak. Not even in the day time against the Marlins with a lead.
Jeff McNeil broke out of a slump in a big way with a second inning RBI double. Later in that second, Dominic Smith hit a sacrifice fly to give the Mets a 2-0 lead.
After that, the Mets again forgot how to hit in RISP going 2-for-10 in the game. However, you would’ve thought that wouldn’t matter. After all, deGrom was on the mound.
Well, the near impossible happened. He would have a near Steven Matz moment in the sixth.
Garrett Cooper led off the inning with a homer. Then, Pete Alonso couldn’t field a somewhat tough hop allowing Matt Joyce to reach. That’s usually when deGrom bears down, but he just didn’t seem to have it in this inning.
He was up 1-2 on Lewin Diaz who then hit an RBI double. deGrom was up 0-2 on Miguel Rojas, who then hit a go-ahead RBI single. He was then up 1-2 on Jorge Alfaro, who hit an RBI to put the Marlins up 4-2.
The odd part was deGrom was his normal self over the first five innings, and he struck out nine. Of the four runs he allowed, only one was earned. Still, you have some to expect much more from deGrom.
The Mets didn’t get him off the hook. Robinson Cano homered in the bottom of the sixth to pull the Mets to within 4-3. The Marlins got that run back when Brian Anderson homered off Brad Brach in the eighth.
This 5-3 loss was yet another bad loss for this team. The Mets can fool themselves they’re still in the race, but nothing we have seen recently suggests they’ll stay in it.
Game Notes: deGrom became the first pitcher to face an opponent four times in a row since Freddie Fitzsimmons did it in 1929.
Really dislike trading Smith, who was the closest to major league ready starting pitching prospect as Brodie has decimated the upper levels of the farm pitching wise. Castro has pitched decently this year, but the hard hit rate is always high and he’s going to his 4th team already at age 25 and has a career 4.74 fip. Frazier is having his worst year of his career so far as is Chirnos and at ages 34 and 36 respectively it could conceivably be the end of the line for both. Frazier has really fallen off power wise the last few years and against righties, and Chirnos has been much worse than Ramos— I was hoping for the Mets toget Castro to platoon with Ramos, who has been bad vs righties this year and hasn’t been able to hit fastballs this year. I wish Brodie had stood pat honestly.
Based on what he did and gave up, BVW undoubtedly should’ve stood pat.