The Mets were shutout by the Giants by the score of 3-0 on Tuesday night in San Francisco. Here are my takeaways from the loss…
Shhhhh! The bats are sleeping, again.
The Mets had absolutely no offense once again on Tuesday, although they did have a few chances to score.
They didn’t even get their first baserunner until the third inning, although they loaded the bases on two walks after Kevin Plawecki doubled with one out. But Daniel Murphy struck out to end that threat.
The Mets didn’t get another base runner until the sixth inning when Curtis Granderson led off with his first triple of the year. But then, Hunter Pence came up with one of the great plays of the year when he made a diving catch on a lazy popup from Ruben Tejada, who then got up and gunned out Granderson at the plate attempting to tag.
That pretty much ended the Mets hopes in this one.
It was a tad overaggressive by Tim Teufel to send Granderson there. Sure, the Mets were down three runs at that point and they needed to score, but the ball was shallow, there was nobody out, and while it took a good play to throw Granderson out, the Mets still had another out to work with to try and plate the run. But again, I get what Teufel was doing.
Bartolo Colon wasn’t bad, but wasn’t good enough.
It was more or less a typical outing for Colon Tuesday. He pitched to a lot of contact, he gave up a a few runs, worked in and out of jams, but kept at least a normal offense in the game.
He wasn’t bad, although he was beat by some poor defense, some by his own doing. But unfortunately, despite their “outburst” over the last three games, they don’t score three runs with regularity, which made this an impossible mountain to climb on Tuesday.
The defense was up to it’s old tricks.
I’ve said it over and over again – the Mets cannot afford to play loose with the baseball if they aren’t going to hit. I mean, they cannot afford to do that anyway, but when there’s no margin for error, the defensive miscues simply aren’t acceptable, and always seem to come back and bite the Mets.
The miscue of the night came in the third inning when Murphy mishandled a routine groundball off the bat of Matt Duffy and allowed him to reach, giving away a key out which afforded the Giants an opportunity to score a run.
Murphy had a brutal game overall with that error and his unproductive 0-for-3 at the plate with five runners left on-base all by himself.
It’s not unexpected. Its the same people making the errors, only now they’re standing in different places on the infield. Until that part changes, the mistakes are likely to continue to take place.
Other notes from Tuesday:
The Mets did not hit a home run for the ninth consecutive game, the longest streak in baseball in 2015.
The Mets fell to 0-35 when trailing after seven innings this season.
With his two doubles tonight, Plawecki is now 16-for-his-last-50 over his last 16 games.
Lucas Duda went 0-for-4 on Tuesday – he is 19-for-his-last-120 at the plate.
Tuesday marked the sixth time in the club’s last 27 games they’ve been shutout, and the tenth time overall.
Every Mets player to come to bat on Tuesday – except for Plawecki – struck out once tonight.
The Mets are now 20-27 against non-NL East opponents.
Just Mets 