Marcus Stro-No, Not Another Injury

The New York Mets entered the game with Jonathan Villar and Tomas Nido unavailable. Brandon Drury was sent down to Syracuse, and Patrick Mazeika was recalled. However, Syracuse was shut down for the day due to COVID.

The Mets had a doubleheader yesterday, and they have a planned bullpen day tomorrow. The absolute last thing this team needed was another injury. That goes double for a starter.

Well, Marcus Stroman had to leave the game with a left hip problem while facing the lead-off batter in the second inning.

This meant Yennsy Diaz, who pitched 2.1 innings three days ago, was needed to give the Mets multiple innings. Put another way, they needed him to come up huge.

Well, that’s the way his outing started. After loading the bases with no outs, and a mound visit from Francisco Lindor, Diaz would strike out the next three batters to escape the jam. That’s made all the more impressive by his striking out Ronald Acuña to end the inning.

There was no such luck for Diaz in the third. After he allowed a hit to Ozzie Albies, he walked Abraham Almonte. He then got a ground ball from Austin Riley, but it would not go for a double play.

With the shift, Jeff McNeil opted to field the ground ball on the shortstop side of second instead of letting Lindor field it.

McNeil initially tried to out race Almonte to second, but he couldn’t. Instead, he got Riley out at first. What might’ve been an inning ending double play was just one out. On the very next pitch, Dansby Swanson hit a three run homer.

That’s all the runs the Braves needed. That’s because of a mixture of Charlie Morton being great and the Mets offense being dreadful. After all, the Mets have been shut out in consecutive games and in three of their last seven.

With the injuries, the Mets resorted to having David Peterson and Jerad Eickhoff pinch hit. You may want to attribute that to the offensive problems, but Eickhoff had the Mets only hit off Morton. After that fifth inning single, the Mets didn’t get another hit until James McCann doubled with two outs in the ninth.

Really, about the only bright spot was the bullpen. Over eight innings, they allowed just the three runs. The big hero was Aaron Loup who came up big by pitching three scoreless.

Still, this was a 3-0 loss where the Mets lost another pitcher and could only muster two hits. They’ve missed a chance to really deliver a blow to the Braves chances of winning the division, and according to what happens tomorrow, they may be giving the Braves new life.

Game Notes: Michael Conforto was going to be activated off the IL, but the Mets opted to wait another day.

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