Jump on Yanks, but Mickey’s pen bursts
MICKEY Callaway made some bold lineup moves in search of offense that paid early dividends, but then he made some curious bullpen decisions that may well have contributed to the Mets losing still another ballgame. Where does it end for this team? They finally broke out of their offensive funk, scoring three runs in the first inning on Saturday night, and somehow that only made their eighth straight loss sting a little more, as the Yankees roared back, flexing their home-run muscles to win, 4-3.
Can it get more embarrassing than losing eight straight games, all at home? Well, sure, considering they have one more game in this Subway Series, against Yankees’ ace Luis Severino on Sunday night, no less.
Steven Matz couldn’t hold a 3-0 lead, giving up home runs to Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar, but in the end it came down to a bullpen game, and make no mistake, the Mets’ pen is wafer-thin with Jeurys Familia on the disabled list and Seth Lugo starting for the injured Noah Syndergaard.
Still, Callaway’s decision-making in the late innings was made to order for second-guessing.
First, he had Robert Gsellman up as early as the sixth inning, but chose not to bring him in to face Andujar after Matz walked Gary Sanchez with one out — and Andujar promptly tied the game with a two-run home run.
I thought Gsellman would be the primary closer with Familia out, but if Callaway was going to use him early, you had to think it would be for multiple innings.
Yet when the manager brought Gsellman in to start the seventh, he didn’t double-switch anyone out of the game, knowing that his pitcher was slated to bat third in the bottom of the inning in a game that was tied.
And, sure enough, when Adrian Gonzalez doubled to lead off the bottom of the seventh, Callaway pinch-hit for Gsellman — to no avail when Luis Guiillorme flew out to center, and the game stayed tied into the eighth.
Afterward Callaway said he has come to believe Gsellman is at his best pitching just an inning per outing, which is how he has used him in his last five appearances.
OK, but he did have him up in the sixth inning. And either way, Gsellman is the Mets’ best reliever at the moment, so wouldn’t you want him facing the heart of the Yankees’ lineup?
Callaway said no, he thought Swarzak was the best matchup in the eighth inning because of his slider-high fastball combination. Problem is, you can’t help but wonder if the moment was a little too big for Swarzak as he readjusts to pitching in high-leverage situations.
Indeed, the righthander said he wanted to start Aaron Judge off with a slider in the dirt, believing the Yankees’ slugger would be in swing mode.
“I wanted to spike it,” was the way Swarzak put it. “I just didn’t put it where I needed to put it.”
Perhaps that’s where late-inning pressure plays a role. In any case, the 84-mph slider hung in the middle of the plate, belt-high, begging to be crushed, and Judge obliged for the go-ahead home run.
Swarzak did strike out Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez, but also gave up singles to Miguel Andujar and Didi Gregorius before getting out of the inning. Afterward Callaway said that had everything gone according to plan, and the Mets taken a lead, he may have let Swarzak stay in for a second inning as the closer.
Again, it seems like a lot to throw at Swarzak this quickly, and with the Mets desperate to break their losing streak, this felt like a night when Callaway should have made maximum use of Gsellman, who hadn’t pitched since Wednesday.
In any case, the Yankees continue to roll merrily along, albeit without Masahiro Tanaka for a few weeks after pulling his hamstrings on Friday night, while the misery continues to mount for the Mets — and their manager.
And, to think that for an inning anyway, it was looking like maybe Callaway had regained the golden touch he had early in the season, when his every move seemed to work out while the Mets were flying out to their 11-1 start.
That is, his radical lineup shake-up produced immediate results.
And give the manager credit for trying something different, even if the numbers said it didn’t make sense to have Amed Rosario hit lead-off.
After all, logic is out the window at this point for the Mets, and while Rosario didn’t figure into the first-inning rally, new No. 2 hitter Todd Frazier went deep in the first inning, new No. 3 hitter Brandon Nimmo tripled and new clean-up hitter Asdrubal Cabrera also hit a home run.
That quickly, the Mets led 3-0 and the Mets’ fans at Citi Field were delirious. By night’s end, however, they were merely furious again.
And by then most of them probably knew, via social media, that Yoenis Cespedes had come out of his rehab game in Trenton for what the Mets called “precautionary reasons” due to soreness in his quad.
Again, where does it end? AP