The New York Mets, who looked like a force in the first two weeks of the season, have hit a roadblock on their West Coast trip. Over the last two days, they have struggled to generate offense and have fallen behind in the NL East standings. Despite facing quality pitching from the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, the Mets have shown some troubling trends, including poor starting pitching and an inability to hit Winn’s splitter.
The latest loss was a 5-2 defeat to the Giants on Monday night at Oracle Park in the first game of a three-game series. Pete Alonso’s fifth-inning leadoff home run was the only offense the Mets (12-10) could muster against Winn (2-3). They showed some fight by scoring in the ninth inning against closer Camilo Doval, but it was too late.
“You’re going to run through stretches where you’re facing pretty good pitching,” said manager Carlos Mendoza. “But I liked the at-bats in the end in the ninth inning against a pretty good closer, so it’ll be fine.”
The Mets swung on Winn’s splitter often and continued to miss. Winn got 10 swings and misses and struck out six over six innings. He put two on in the seventh before the Giants (11-13) brought in right-hander Ryan Walker, who retired the side in order. Winn allowed only four hits and one walk.
“That split was working,” Mendoza said. “That was a tough pitch and we couldn’t pick it up.”
Alonso homered on a splitter, his team-leading seventh of the year, but otherwise, the Mets didn’t do much against it.
“A lot of the time it looks just like his fastball,” Alonso said. “He throws it out of the same lane and it’s got nice late action on it. He got guys to swing on top of it and hit ground balls or swing over it because he would execute underneath the zone.”
But bats aside, the bigger issue might be the pitching. Left-hander Jose Quintana pitched into the sixth inning and was relieved after giving up a leadoff homer to former Mets outfielder Michael Conforto. Quintana struggled early, allowing two earned runs in the second inning and two more in the third. There were defensive miscues and bloop hits that fell into no-man’s land, and Quintana couldn’t pitch around them. He fell behind hitters with poor fastball command.
Walks have quickly become a problem for the Mets’ pitching staff. Quintana walked three hitters and allowed seven hits in the loss (1-2) and reliever Adonis Medina, who made his season debut, walked two. The walks hurt Quintana in the second and third innings, with a free pass to Thairo Estrada loading the bases in the second. He struck out Tom Murphy to get the second out in the inning, but then Nick Ahmed lined one to center field to drive in two runs and give San Francisco a 2-0 lead. Quintana walked another familiar face — former Mets utility man Wilmer Flores — to lead off the third. He had Jung Ho Lee at 0-2 but the outfielder put the ball in play, flaring one to shallow right-center field. Two batters later, Matt Chapman hit a two-run double.
Two days of poor pitching from Mets starters and stellar pitching from NL West starters resulted in the Amazins’ being outscored 15-2. A lack of length from the starters has forced the Mets to shuffle the bodies in the bullpen. They’ve had to designate Michael Tonkin for assignment twice and shuttle guys across the country and back.
“At the end of the day the starters are going to go deep,” Mendoza said. “Quintana went back out for the sixth on a night where he was at 70 pitches by the third inning. [That’s] when you start thinking about your bullpen users and things like that. But for him to give us five and go back out for the sixth when he wasn’t at his best was important.”
Luckily, the bullpen had reinforcements with Josh Walker called up from Triple-A Syracuse earlier in the day. Reid-Foley should be available again this week. Quintana will get to work on improving his fastball command over the next five days and the Mets will look to Luis Severino and Sean Manaea for more length over the next two days.
“I keep on going and flush this start,” Quintana said. “It was a bad day.”
