Just Mets

The Mets were shutout by the Blue Jays by the score of 8-0 on Wednesday night in Toronto. Here are my takeaways from Wednesday’s loss…

Jon Niese pitched well, but not quite well enough.

Niese was splendid for six innings tonight, featuring a hard and heavy curve and keeping the ball down all night long. He kept the ball on the ground all night and used his defense to induce two inning ending double plays to get him out of a couple of jams. All in all, a very nice evening for Niese, his second good start after an ugly stretch of starts for him.

He ran into a little trouble in the sixth inning with a first and third, one out situation, and actually got the groundball he needed to get out of the jam, but it was hit just a tad out of Wilmer Flores’ range and it turned into a run.

Perhaps a shortstop who has a little better range keeps that second run off the board for Niese, but that’s going to continue to haunt them at times. That’s just Flores who, all things considered, has done a nice job over the last six weeks at shortstop.

In the seventh, he hung one to Kevin Pillar which kind of put a damper on this outing for him and pretty much secured his seventh loss of the year.

Mets needed to hit, and failed to do so.

The Mets didn’t hit too many balls hard tonight, and when they did they hit it right into the Toronto defense. They stranded a runner at second on three different occasions,and just looked very lethargic and flat at the plate tonight. It happens, but it seems to happen a lot to the Mets. It’s just frustrating because the Mets didn’t have to bat the pitcher, they were facing a guy who had a 5.75 ERA coming in, and Niese pitched well enough to win in a band box tonight.

A debut to forget for Akeel Morris.

This was probably not how Morris envisioned his big league debut would go. He got absolutely smoked in the eight inning tonight, allowing no doubter after no doubter and five runs at the end of the blood bath.

He’s a good kid and will be a very good pitcher in this league in the coming years, but this just isn’t his time. After all, he was at Single-A pitching at Tradition Field just three days ago, and here he is serving as the depth the Mets are desperately searching for when he really isn’t ready for this stage. As thrilled as Morris is about being here, it’s almost unfair to have him serve the club in this manner. But he’s a righty and was on the 40-man roster, and the Mets needed a temporary body while they attempted to rest the other arms. It just didn’t work out.

He’ll be fine in time.

Throw it away, move on.

There’s really not much else to say about tonight. This game may just be in that third of the season the team is just going to lose. They had won five out of six coming in and expended a lot of energy in many of those wins, and they just flattened out tonight. It happens – they just need to go out and get the win tomorrow.

Other notes from Wednesday:

Niese is now 0-5 in his last seven starts.

Juan Lagares extended his hitting streak to eight games with a first inning single – he’s 12-for-32 during this stretch.

The Mets walked four batters in the eighth inning and seven total on Wednesday night.

The Mets are now 10-20 away from Citi Field this season.

The Mets went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position on Wednesday.