After a huge sweep of the Nationals, Mickey Callaway put it to his veterans to see if the veterans wanted the day off after landing in Miami at 5 A.M.  In a promising sign for the season, the Mets players were not overlooking the Marlins, and they all wanted to get right back out there.

Certainly, after all the excitement in Washington, this series was going to be a bit of a let-down. The real challenge was not letting this become a trap series.  Fortunately for the Mets, they had Noah Syndergaard on the mound, which always gives the Mets a big advantage.

The one issue is Thor hasn’t quite been Thor this season.  Even in his Opening Day start when he struck out 10, he allowed four runs.  He didn’t see the fifth inning in his second start, and the early season troubles carried forward into tonight.

His troubles started in the fifth when Amed Rosario didn’t get his glove down on a Brian Anderson grounder.  With Michael Conforto playing deep in an expansive ToMarlins Park outfield that became a two base error.  After two quick outs, Syndergaard issued back-to-back two out walks to Bryan Holaday and Tomas Telis.  This led to a Miguel Rojas RBI single.

In the sixth, Anderson got to Syndergaard again doubling home Starlin Castro, who had led off the inning with a single.  Syndergaard would get out of the inning before allowing any further damage and with the Mets still having a lead.

His final line was 6.0 innings, five hits, two runs, one earned, two walks, and five strikeouts.  No, there is nothing wrong with that start, and with Syndergaard pumping in 94 MPH sliders, there wasn’t anything wrong with his stuff.  However, it just seems like something is just off.  And yet despite, that he got the win.

The Mets would score four runs even with the offense sputtering a bit against Jose Urena and the rest of the Marlins staff.  Despite getting the leadoff runner on in five of the nine innings and the team drawing five walks, they could only push four runs across home plate.  Fortunately, that was plenty.

Rosario got the first rally started with a second inning with a Todd Frazier lead-off walk.  He’d come home to score after ensuing singles from Asdrubal Cabrera and Adrian Gonzalez.  The damage might’ve been greater, but Kevin Plawecki hit into a double play.  Cabrera scored on the play giving the Mets a 2-0 lead.

That lead grew to 3-0 in the third on a rally started by a long Rosario double that nearly went out to deep center.  For a moment, it appeared he wasn’t going to score after a Conforto flyout and a Yoenis Cespedes strikeout. Rosario still came to score on a Jay Bruce RBI single.

For his part, Cespedes, who is battling the flu had a tough game at the plate.  He was 0-4 with three strikeouts leaving five Mets on base.  Even with that, he did make a great throw in the outfield:

https://twitter.com/HornikGSN/status/983494562051215360

Really, the Mets should have blown the game open in the seventh.  Gonzalez had a lead-off walk off Junichi Tazawa, and Brandon Nimmo, pinch hitting for Sydnergaard, reached on a Justin Bour throwing error.  Rosario came up and brought home Gonzalez with the one out RBI single to give the Mets a 4-2 lead.

Conforto would then walk to load the bases, but no further damage would be done as Cespedes and Bruce struck out to end the inning.

There are games where the inability to tack on runs comes back to bite you.  With the way the Mets bullpen is pitching this year, today wasn’t that day.

Hansel Robles flirted with trouble in the seventh, but he got out of the inning unscathed.  Jerry Blevins and AJ Ramos combined for a scorless eighth, and Jeurys Familia recorded his sixth save of the season.

It wasn’t an easy save for Familia.  Derek Dietrich hit a double just past the outstretched glove of Bruce to put runners on second and third with one out.  With the tying runs in scoring position, Familia responded by striking out Rojas and Castro to end the game.

The Mets had a tough task ahead of them having to face a bad Marlins team.  Overall, the Mets did what good teams do – they did what they needed to do to beat the bad team.

Game Notes: Juan Lagares did not enter the game for defense in the ninth.  This is the third time in Mets history they started the season 8-1.  In 1985, the Mets won 98 games and missed the postseason. In 2006, they won 97 games en route to winning the NL East.