METS BASHED IN RETURN TO QUEENS
Hapless Mets blanked by Giants with Lindor back in lineup
The Mets began the last leg of their 13-game gauntlet against the Dodgers and Giants on Tuesday night.
It went just like much of the first 10 games.
The return of Francisco Lindor did not awaken a scuffling offense and Tylor Megill served up four home runs as the Mets sank further into their rut with an 8-0 loss to the Giants at Citi Field.
The Mets (61-64) lost for the ninth time in their past 11 games, all of them coming against the top two teams in the NL West. The Giants (81-44), who own the best record in baseball, took two of three from the Mets last week in San Francisco before the Mets dropped three of four against the Dodgers in Los Angeles. They remained 6 ½ games back of the Braves for first place in the NL East.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Lindor, who went 0-for-4 in his first game since July 16 due to a strained right oblique. “Thirty-seven games [left], it’s time to go. It’s been time to go. We’ve got to find a way. Continue to compte, continue to grind, not make any excuses. We’ve just got to go out there and battle.
“This is what we get paid for. We get paid to go out there and compete and give it our best. A month is not a lot of time. It’s time to go.”
After hitting just 10-for-53 (.189) with runners in scoring position on the 2-5 road trip, the Mets returned home and got just four runners into scoring position all night Tuesday (two of them in the ninth inning). They went 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position, while being held to five hits overall.
Megill didn’t give the Mets much of a chance, either, in the worst start of his young MLB career. The rookie right-hander, who had mostly been a pleasant surprise this season, was rocked for 11 hits and seven runs over 3 2/3 innings. The Giants crushed four home runs off Megill, who entered the game having allowed seven homers in his first 11 starts (56 innings).
“I didn’t have command of my [offspeed] stuff, and then you get exposed for that and they do what they do when you don’t have your stuff,” Megill said.
After throwing six innings of one-run ball last Wednesday in San Francisco, Megill gave up plenty of loud contact Tuesday.
Brandon Belt got the damage started in the first inning with a solo home run off the apple in center field. In the second inning, former Met Wilmer Flores, who was introduced to a loud ovation, sliced a
double to right field. He came around to score when Mike Yastrzemski crushed a two-run shot right for the 3-0 Giants lead.
With two outs and a runner on first in the fourth inning, LaMonte Wade Jr. drilled a home run to center field to give the Giants a 5-0 lead. Belt then made it back-to-back with his second home run of the night — just hours after learning his grandmother had died — extending the lead to 6-0.
Buster Posey and Alex Dickerson followed with singles — the Giants’ 10th and 11th hits of the game — at which point manager Luis Rojas finally put Megill out of his misery and called on Trevor Williams from the bullpen.
Brandon Crawford singled off Williams to make it 7-0 before the inning finally concluded.
The Mets, meanwhile, mustered just three hits in 5 ¹/3 innings against Giants rookie lefthander Sammy Long — an infield single, a bloop single and a double by Megill that Wade misplayed in right field.
“I thought we were in between with our approach and we didn’t hit the ball hard,” Rojas said. “It’s almost like we were chasing one pitch at the time and we didn’t get that one.”