WOES FOLLOW METS TO COAST
Tumble to Giants as skid hits 4
SAN FRANCISCO – The best team in baseball delivered one gut punch after another to the Mets, a crumbling club slipping quickly in the NL East standings.
Mets trade target Kris Bryant haunted them Monday night, cranking two home runs to help bury the Amazin’s in a 7-5 loss to the Giants at Oracle Park.
The Mets began their seven-game West Coast road trip by dropping to .500 for the first time since May 6, and falling 3.5 games behind the Braves in third place.
Rich Hill lasted just 3.2 innings in his fourth start (fifth game) as a Met. He was charged with two earned runs on six hits with 68 pitches, continuing the Mets’ lopsided rotation trend since the All-Star break.
As easy as it has been to blame the Mets offense all season, their bats weren’t the problem on Monday. The bullpen scuffled as Miguel Castro and Trevor May combined to give up five earned runs, with questionable managerial decisions not exactly helping.
Aaron Loup got Jeurys Familia off the hook in the sixth inning by retiring one batter on four pitches and stranding his two inherited runners. Instead of putting Loup back on the mound for the seventh to face left-handed veteran Brandon Belt, Luis Rojas went to May.
Rojas has used Loup sparingly of late. As the Mets’ best relief pitcher, sporting a 1.17 season ERA, Loup entered his relief appearance Monday night having thrown 21 pitches across just one inning combined in the past 10 days.
As such, the Giants were just giddy with glee that Loup was out of the game, so they could tee off against May.
Belt and Bryant led off the seventh inning with back-to-back home runs to put the Mets in a three-run hole. May coughed up one more run before ending the inning by walking Evan Longoria and surrendering an RBI triple to Brandon Crawford, who went 4-for-4 on the night.
The Mets, to their credit, are consistent at coming alive in the late innings. Jonathan Villar crushed a two-run home run to right field in the eighth inning to follow up on J.D. Davis’ 3-for-4 night. Villar’s 14 homer of the year only further drove the point home that May should have received a quicker hook. He stayed in the game well after the three-batter minimum rule, long enough to let the Giants tack on an insurance run.