THIS MET LOSS REALLY HURTS
Familia no help as ailing Amazin’s fall to Nats in 11
If it weren’t for the starting pitching, and the promise it continues to offer, this would feel like the quite the train wreck around the Mets right now. For more than a week getting a clutch hit has been the rarest of occurrences; they’ve made key errors defensively that cost them games; and the bullpen continues to find ways to lose in the late innings.
Throw in the fact that suddenly the Curse of 2016 is back, in the form of injuries up and down the lineup, and, well, the timing couldn’t be worse with the Nationals in town.
Games in April aren’t supposed to feel this important. But after the Mets lost 4-3 in 11 innings to the Nats on Friday night, when Jeurys Familia walked in the go-ahead run, suddenly it feels as if the next couple of days could be critical.
At worst the Mets need to win at least one of the two. A sweep would leave them 5½ games behind the Nats, which might be more important psychologically than anything, making them feel like they’re already in chase mode.
Yes, there are a million games remaining, but on a day that began with so much bad injury news, the Mets needed a lift, and instead they’re left to wonder about Familia, who was supposed to be a savior for an overworked bullpen as he returned this week from his 15-game suspension.
Instead he walked the first two batters he faced, including Trea Turner on four straight pitches with the bases loaded, repeatedly throwing his 97-mph sinker into the ground.
And afterward he seemed to have no answers as to why, insisting he was neither rusty from his suspension nor tired from his 30-pitch outing on Thursday night.
“I was just missing the zone,’’ he said. “I was missing with my sinker. That’s all.”
And so the only good news on this night for the Mets was that Matt Harvey, who found out on Thursday he’d be pushed up a day to start this game due to Jacob deGrom’s stiff neck, delivered a strong start, going seven innings despite allowing a two-run home run to Bryce Harper in the first inning.
Harvey didn’t have anything resembling his dominant stuff, striking out only two hitters, but he changed speeds and finessed his way through a tough lineup to give the Mets a chance.
The Mets seem to get at least that type of start night after night, and it’s the reason they should survive all the injuries in the long run, but that’s not much consolation right now as they’ve lost six of seven games, all of them in the late innings as their inability to hit in the clutch is already becoming as much of an issue as it was last season. Now all the injuries just complicate matters. Indeed, the significance of this mini-crisis became all too obvious in the seventh inning Friday night, when their first pinch-hitter in a 3-3 game with the rival Nationals was … Zack Wheeler? Yep, and Collins didn’t have much of a choice. Of his four non-pitchers on the bench, three were injured and the other was Kevin Plawecki, who he needed in case catcher Rene Rivera took a foul tip to his throwing hand or something. The manager couldn’t even go to his besthitting pitchers, Jacob deGrom, who was scratched from the start on Friday night because of a stiff neck, and Noah Syndergaard, who was off-limits, Collins said, because he pitched the previous night.
So naturally Wheeler, a .094 career hitter, delivered a two-out double down the right field line. Ah, yes, it would have been a great story if the Mets had cashed Wheeler’s hit in for the go-ahead run.
Instead this turned into the latest in a string of excruciating losses decided in the late innings. Now they have to hope deGrom can make his start on Saturday, and no matter what they’re going to be short on the bench again.
Honestly, what is it with this team, this franchise, anyway?
Injuries cause pain for many a team every season — just ask the Giants, who lost Madison Bumgarner to a shoulder injury via a dirt bike mishap — but somehow they always seem to come in waves with the Mets, often at the worst times.
Obviously April isn’t as bad as August or September in a pennant race, but the Mets were hoping desperately for good health early, at least partially to distance themselves mentally from the injury-plagued season in 2016 that wrecked their chances of winning the NL East.
Yet over the last couple of days injuries have wiped out six — count ’em, six — significant players, at least for the short term.
“You have to fight through it,” Collins said in the dugout before Friday’s game. “I think we have the right attitude about it, but I can’t pretend the injuries aren’t a problem for us.”
How they respond, especially after losing the series opener, now feels all the more important.