☀️ GOOD MORNING:
The Mets and Dodgers, two of baseball’s most expensive and successful teams, are preparing for their showdown this weekend with mediocre play. As the Dodgers snapped a four-game losing streak by overcoming a blown save last night, the Mets lost three games in a row for the first time this season, the final club to experience such a slump.
It turns out even the good teams have bad weeks. “Welcome to the ups and downs of a baseball season,” Steve Cohen tweeted after the game. “This too will pass.” A Mets team that continues to get strong starting pitching has the worst OPS in baseball over the past week (.509), resulting in only eight runs crossing the plate in the last six games.
Worse yet, Pete Alonso, the bat that carried the team through the start of the season, is homerless since May 5, hitting an anemic .157 since that date, with only three extra base hits and four RBIs.
Nobody is picking up the slack. During this stretch the Mets have lost five of six, Francisco Lindor is 2-for-21, Juan Soto is 3-for-17, Brandon Nimmo is 3-for-22, Mark Vientos is 4-for-22, Brett Baty is 1-for-15 and Francisco Álvarez is 1-for-14.
📉 THE PHILLIES keep winning, five straight, to extend their first-place lead to 1.5 games. New York will try to pick themselves off the mat in a tough matchup against Boston ace Garrett Crochet on Wednesday, before welcoming those struggling and injured Dodgers to Citi Field over the weekend.
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🗑️ WASTED OPPORTUNITIES
Naturally, on a night the Mets were gifted a bullpen game after Walker Buehler got himself tossed arguing a terrible call by the umpire in the third inning, the offense still couldn’t do any damage against six Boston relievers, four of whom were pitching on back-to-back nights.
😡 MISSED CHANCES: New York continues to look lost with runners in scoring position, going 0-for-7 on the night. They have recorded just five hits in their past 54 plate appearances with runners on second and third, striking out 10 times and failing to collect a single extra base hit.
Brandon Nimmo tried his best to turn those numbers around. With runners on second and third, he gave a Brennan Bernardino curveball a ride to the deepest part of the ballpark in the third, but it found the center fielder’s glove.
“If I go left off the Monster, it’s a double. If it goes to the right, it’s probably a homer,” Nimmo said after the game. “A little bit of bad luck there.”
The baseball gods seemed to want to even things out for Nimmo robbing the Red Sox of a run in a similar situation the prior inning:
🤬 BACK TO BUEHLER: In his first game since returning from the injured list, the former Dodger made it like a rehab appearance, getting himself (and his manager) tossed in the third inning after home plate umpire Mike Estabrook took exception to Buehler arguing a missed strike.
Was it Buehler’s fault? It doesn’t matter to Mets fans, but there’s no denying Estabrook missed the call on a pitch that perhaps he took his eye off because Francisco Lindor was in the process of stealing second base.
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