SEASON IN A GAME
As Mets’ fortunes keep spiraling down, Yanks take the opposite tack
THE Mets have been perfect hosts to the Yankees. Not only hanging enough pitches at Citi Field so the Yankees’ long-ball barrage can continue, but using the first two Subway Series games as an example of how their season has gone, just in case the Yankees hadn’t noticed.
Which is to say, great to start and a collapse thereafter.
On Friday night, Brandon Nimmo homered on the second pitch of the bottom of the first. On Saturday night, with one out in the bottom of the first, Todd Frazier homered, Nimmo tripled and Asdrubal Cabrera homered.
The Mets never scored again in either game. They lost both.
Neither Jacob deGrom nor Steven Matz could not hold a lead, and the Mets’ bullpen could not preserve a tie against the Yankees’ relentless power bats. The final on Saturday night was 4-3, the differ- ence coming when Aaron Judge homered on Anthony Swarzak’s first pitch of the eighth inning.
“We are playing good baseball and just not getting the wins,” Swarzak said.
Frighteningly, there is truth to that statement. The Mets played close to their “A” game over the first 18 innings of this Subway Series. The Yankees did not. But the difference in talent and confidence are just too great between the teams. The Yankees’ belief system is that in a close game late, their power bats and power bullpen arms will conquer all.
The Mets’ belief system is essentially that bad will become worse.
Take the sixth inning Saturday. The Mets led 3-1 when, shortly af- ter the frame opened, they announced Yoenis Cespedes had been pulled after two at-bats of a rehab game with Double-A Binghamton because of tightness in his right quad. He had doubled in those two at-bats and before the bad news emerged, a Mets fan could dream that Cespedes looked so good perhaps he would be summoned for Sunday night’s Subway finale.
Alas, these are the 2018 Mets. Which means the worst outcome was revealed — followed soon after by a pile-on of more misery.
With one out, Matz walked Gary Sanchez, who it feels has not produced a hit in weeks. At 0-1 on Miguel Andujar, Kevin Plawecki called for a slider. Matz shook his head no. He shook four times in all, wanting to get to his curveball, which he ultimately threw and hung, and which the extra-base machine Andujar swatted for a homer.
“Bad walk to Sanchez, bad pitch [to Andujar] and game tied,” Matz said.
Bad to worse — the Mets lost both their best bat for longer and lost yet another lead.
They ended up cementing their eighth straight loss when Swarzak turned what was supposed to be a spiked slider in the dirt designed to get Judge to chase into a hanger that he clobbered over the left-field wall.
“It’s a close game every night,” said Mickey Callaway, overseeing the longest losing streak by the Mets since the waning days of Art Howe in 2004. “We need the big hit. We need the big shutdown inning.”
That sounds like the mantra of a losing team — asking for outcomes that arrive too infrequently
by players ill equipped to provide more.
Callaway did try a to revive this patient by restructuring the lineup, leading off with Amed Rosario followed by Frazier, Nimmo and Cabrera — largely because he wanted to get Nimmo into more of an RBI arena.
The Mets, who had scored three runs total in five previous games, scored three in four batters Saturday. It was the first time in 83 innings they had scored multiple runs. But, just as on Friday, that was it. The margin for error for deGrom, Matz and the bullpen is as small as Jose Reyes’ batting average.
After Cabrera’s homer, the Mets went hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position. They let young Domingo German settle down, stabilize the game and give the Yankees and those power bats and bullpen arms a chance to win.
Meanwhile, with Jeurys Familia put on the disabled list on Friday and Seth Lugo moved to the rotation to replace Noah Syndergaard on Sunday, Matz needed to be economical and go deep. He walked four, however, and lasted six innings. That left Callaway hoping Robert Gsellman could give him one inning and Swarzak (if there was a lead) could provide two — though he had pitched just 3 ¹/3 major league innings all season.
This is not the formula or the personnel of a winning team and, on cue, the Mets are not winning. They started 11-1. They started with homers in this Subway Series by Nimmo and Frazier and Cabrera.
In both cases it fell apart thereafter — the story of the 2018 Mets.