RECIPE FOR DISASTER
Mets end dismal homestand with sloppy defeat to Pirates
This was just piling on. An unnecessary joke after the butt of the insults was already thoroughly embarrassed.
As if this Mets season couldn’t get worse, as if the first 6 ¹/2 listless innings of another lost Sunday weren’t demoralizing enough, there was this gut-punch moment that perfectly encapsulated this empty season in Flushing.
Already trailing by four runs, the Mets turned what appeared to be a routine inning-ending double play. After the seventh-inning stretch, after the singing of “God Bless America,” “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Lazy Mary,” the Mets were sent back onto the field. The Pirates had requested the play be reviewed, and it was ruled second baseman Neil Walker’s foot wasn’t on the base for the first out.
“Guy peels off and it’s a tailormade double play. I guess that’s what replay’s for, to get the play right, but that’s really stretching it,” Walker said. “It’s arbitrary at best. ... Simple logic would tell you that’s a double play 100 times out of 100, but in today’s game, it’s not that way.”
Home plate umpire Jim Reynolds didn’t get a chance to stop the seventhinning stretch festivities, creating further confusion. On the second pitch reliever Josh Edgin threw after the delay, David Freese singled to right, driving in a run, adding further salt to the already raw wound.
The rest of the afternoon was a formality. The Pirates cruised to an 11-1 victory in front of 35,323 mostly ambivalent fans, capping a 3-4 homestand for the floundering and now third-place Mets (24-31), who dropped four of the final five to return to seven games under .500, their low water mark of the season. The slide also included the team’s mascot, Mr. Met, flipping off fans, the opposing team’s ball boy, a Mets employee, interfering with Wilmer Flores on a foul pop up only for the call to be reversed because it was ruled unintentional, and now this strange replay reversal.
“Part of you feels like Murphy’s Law has been in effect up to this point,” Walker said. “When it’s rained, it’s poured.”
The lopsided loss also continued a season-long trend of poor performances on Sundays and in the finale of a series. The Mets are 5-13 in the final game of a series, 2-7 on Sundays, when they have been outscored 78-37, and they have dropped the last eight finales of a series at Citi Field. They also are 3-11 in day games.
“I’m shocked by it, I’m disappointed by it,” manager Terry Collins said. “We went into camp, coming out of there saying, boy, we stay healthy, we’re going to be pretty good.
“There’s a lot missing. We haven’t pitched very well in day games. In the past, we were pretty good in day games. I don’t know if it’s coming right back after night games with similar guys. Maybe we got to take a look at that.”
In his last start before Steven Matz and Seth Lugo return next weekend against the Braves, Tyler Pill took a predictable step back, possibly booking his return trip to Triple-A Las Vegas. Coming off his surprisingly strong start against the Brewers on Tuesday, the soft-tossing Pill regressed. He was battered for eight hits in five innings, and charged with five runs, three of them earned. He allowed runs in three of his five frames, putting the Mets in a hole they couldn’t recover from. Michael Conforto helped dig the grave, committing two throwing errors that directly led to Pirates runs.
The Mets did have their chances against Pirates starter Trevor Williams, who entered with a 5.20 ERA, but produced just a single run on a Travis d’Arnaud double play.
“One step forward and two steps back,” Walker said. “When we’re hitting, we’re not really pitching that well. When the pitching’s going well, we aren’t hitting. As somebody that’s played this game for a while, you know on good teams, it’s going to come back, and it’s going to even out. That hasn’t happened for us yet.
“We know we have a good team here. We just need to create some momentum.”