AMAZIN’S JUST CAN’T BEAT NATS
Hole getting deeper as Amazin’s lose 3rd straight
Terry Collins made it clear before and during this series against the Nationals that the Mets couldn’t afford to slip any more in the NL East standings if they hope to revive their season.
But that’s just what they have done after dropping the first three games to Washington, including Saturday’s 7-4 defeat at Citi Field.
They will enter Sunday looking to avoid a four-game sweep, which would leave them eight games under .500 and 12 ½ games back of the Nationals, both matching season-highs.
Despite the ugly numbers — and ugly play — Collins said he doesn’t think his team is dead just yet.
“We’ll keep grinding,” Collins said following the latest defeat. “What do we have 90 [games] left? We’ll show up for all 90.”
It’s actually 95, but at this point, that might just mean the misery will last longer.
In the midst of 14 straight games against teams that reached the postseason last year, it seems highly unlikely the Mets will have to face any of them in the playoffs this October.
“We’ll keep playing and if we win [Sunday], we’ll go on the road and try to win some games,” Collins said. “That’s all you can do. You can’t put your head between your legs and run and hide. This is the big leagues. When you play good teams, you’d better play well.”
And the Mets haven’t. They have lost all six games against the Nationals in Queens this season and a trip to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers starting Monday doesn’t look all that enticing, especially now that the Mets have lost four of five overall.
Seth Lugo wasn’t able to duplicate the performance from his season debut last week in Atlanta, when he gave up just one run in seven innings. This time, he gave up a run in each of the first four innings, although one of the runs was unearned.
A 4-0 deficit was the last thing the Mets needed and though they closed the gap on more than one occasion, they never tied the game.
Washington right-hander Ste- phen Strasburg, coming off his worst outing of the season in a loss to Atlanta last week, wasn’t great on Saturday, but he was good enough.
The Mets hit into rally-killing double plays in the first, fourth and sixth innings, the first two by Wilmer Flores.
Flores ripped a line drive sacrifice fly to right to drive in Yoenis Cespedes and make it 4-2 in the sixth.
Adam Lind took Paul Sewald deep in the eighth to give Washington a 6-2 lead.
The Mets scored twice in the bottom of the inning when Cespedes hit a leadoff homer, his fourth hit of the day, and Jose Reyes added a two-out RBI single, but Rene Rivera whiffed for the fourth time and that was it.
If the Mets are going to stay afloat, they will have to change directions quickly.
“It is frustrating,” Jay Bruce, who had three hits, said. “They’re obviously the team that’s right in front of us. We have a lot of work to do and an uphill battle to climb. We had a chance to chip into that a little bit [this series] and we haven’t [done it]. We can’t think about what could have been.”
The Mets also are behind Miami, meaning there’s another team for them to pass before they even get to the Nationals. But that goal seems to be almost out of reach.
“I think most teams want to be in a better spot right now,” Bruce said. “We obviously came into spring training with a very talented team on paper and had a lot of injuries. … We have a job to do. We owe it to ourselves, to the team, to our franchise [and] to the city to play baseball. To come here and prepare and play every day.”
And maybe, at some point, to win.