WHAT THE BUC?
Mets swept, lead still 4½:
THERE VERY well might be three teams from the Central Division in the National League playoffs this season. That doesn’t look like it will bode well for the Mets, if they end up qualifying for postseason play.
Fan target Bobby Parnell couldn’t maintain a late tie score for his second consecutive outing, and the Mets were swept in a three-game weekend series with an ugly 8-1 loss on Sunday to the Pirates before 40,250 at Citi Field.
Although they maintained a 4½game cushion in the NL East because the plummeting Nationals also were swept in San Francisco, the Mets fell to 3-17 this season against St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Chicago – all currently in playoff positions – including an 0-13 record to the Cubs and Pirates.
The Mets (63-55) open a twogame series in Baltimore on Tuesday as part of the next nine on the road, where they are 21-34 this season.
“We had a terrible two innings in a row in a good weekend. We played very good baseball until the seventh inning today, so we’ll move on,” Terry Collins said. “I just finished telling the guys and I believe it in my heart while I’m sitting here – if any of you guys in this room would have told me on May 15 that with 44 games left in the season we’d have a 4½-game lead in first place, I’d take that.
“As bad as this game ended up looking, I’ll take it. We’ll take the (day off) and we’ll come out in Baltimore and get ready to play.”
Matt Harvey fought his way through six anythingbut-easy innings of one-run ball, but this marked the 16th time already in his career that the righty allowed no more than one run in a start without recording a win.
Harvey, at 103 pitches before a 42-minute rain delay in the home sixth, was replaced by Parnell to start the seventh with the score tied at 1. Once again, it didn’t go well.
Parnell, who coughed up the decisive two runs without recording an out in the 10th inning of Friday’s loss, this time was tagged for four runs over two-thirds of an inning.
Two of those runs were booked as unearned as the result of a potential double-play comebacker that Parnell whizzed into center field — albeit with shortstop Ruben Tejada acknowledging he was “a little late” covering second base — and a runscoring passed ball charged to Travis d’Arnaud.
“Well, the guy who’s covering (second base) has got to be there, end of story,” Collins said of Tejada. “Bobby got the double-play ball he needed to have, we didn’t make the play. … You’ve got to make the play. End of story. “We should have been out of the inning. So that’s where we’re going to leave it.”
Gregory Polanco and Aramis Ramirez added RBI singles against Parnell, while Pedro Alvarez rapped another off lefty reliever Eric O’Flaherty for a 5-1 game.
Parnell, who was booed off the mound for a second straight outing, has been tagged for 11 earned runs in seven innings over his past 10 appearances following a strong initial return from Tommy John surgery.
He didn’t make himself available to the media following Sunday’s game.
“If we turn the double play, we don’t hear that (booing). We’re out of the inning,” Collins said. “So yeah, that does bother me a little bit and I am a little concerned about Bobby.
“One of the things that we’ve seen is this roller coaster that these guys coming out of surgery have.”
O’Flaherty and Carlos Torres completed the horrendous bullpen and defensive implosions by conceding three more runs in the eighth.
“Hey, look, we lost two (extra-inning) games in the last two days. Today it got ugly. That frustrates me a little bit,” Collins said. “That’s why I said, we’ll rest up for a day, we’ll go to Baltimore and it’s crunch time.
“Forty-four to go, 4½-game lead ... and I won’t look back to what might have been. You can’t do it.”