Just Mets

The Mets lost to the Cubs for the fifth time this season, this time by the score of 1-0 at Citi Field tonight. Here are my takeaways from tonight’s loss…

Another good outing from Jon Niese.

For the fifth straight start, Niese pitched a really nice game, further distancing himself from his real poor stretch in the month of May. He allowed just a single run in the sixth inning thanks in part to a leadoff walk to Kris Bryant, a slight miscue by Niese and Ruben Tejada on a potential play at second base, and then a two-out double to Matt Szczur.

And by slight miscue, I mean slight. It wasn’t even that big of a deal, but it turned into the difference in the game.

Unfortunately with the way this club hits, the timing of every executed play has to be perfect, the defense in general has to be perfect, and quite frankly the pitching needs to be perfect. 

It’s a broken record at this point, but it’s something that’s going to be a daily topic of conversation until something changes with the offense.

It’s hard to win when you don’t hit.

The offense was so incredibly lifeless on Tuesday. They scattered two singles and a double and didn’t hit the ball hard hardly at all outside of that.

It’s really a shame too because they’ve gotten such outstanding pitching lately, yet they just cannot score. They don’t even get that many base runners at this point. Without any of that, it doesn’t matter how good or bad the pitchers pitch – they’re not going to win if they can’t score.

It’s nice to have Daniel Murphy back, but it’s not close to enough.

Murphy of course helps, but he’s not remotely close to being enough to get this offense going. 

He doubled in the fourth inning, and that was the last hit of the night for the Mets who, as I said before, went down very insignificantly from there on out.

The thing is, even if Murphy gets three hits per night, nobody around him is hitting at all, so it won’t really result in much.

Other notes from Tuesday:

Niese now has 3.00 ERA in his last five starts, but he’s 0-3 in that span and is now winless in his last nine starts.

Curtis Granderson saw his eight-game hitting streak end with an 0-for-4 showing at the plate.

With his 0-for-3 at the plate, Wilmer Flores is now 7-for-his-last-42 over his last 12 games.

Ruben Tejada went 0-for-4 and is now 2-for-his-last-29 at the plate.

The Mets have scored 13 runs in their last five games – they’ve now allowed five runs in their last five games.

The Mets were shutout for the fourth time in June.