The Case History for the Mets playing in San Diego, particularly at Petco Park, hasn't been good. Since Petco Park opened in 2004, the Mets have played there I believe about 40 times. In those 40 games, the Mets are, or at least seem to be 6-34, and of those 34 losses, 26 of them were by the score of 2-1. The remainder of them involved some kind of terrible thing happening, like a complete meltdown by the bullpen or a walk-off Grand Slam.
None of those things happened Thursday night/Friday morning, but things didn't go well for the Mets anyway. This time, the obvious culprit was Jacob deGrom, who was going through some sort of mechanical difficulties throughout his rather laborious 5 innings of work. deGrom's velocity was down, his pitches were up, he wasn't getting anybody out and he seemed to be getting progressively angrier and angrier as the game went on. And things didn't exactly start out well for him to begin with. The first batter for the Padres, Wil Myers, who's one more injury away from bust-dom, took him deep. In the 2nd, he gave up a 2-out RBI single to Colin Rea, the opposing Pitcher, and in the 3rd there was more crap.
That being said, deGrom only left a 3-0 game, which was still in control, or at least it was until the Padres topped off their tank against Logan Verrett in the 6th. Derek Norris, who appears to essentially be another Wilson Ramos (meaning a big, loafy Catcher who hits sporadically but for whatever reason batters the Mets to the tune of an .840 BA) hit a Home Run and something else happened. But the larger issue for the Mets was their inability to hit Rea at all. The Mets made solid contact, but basically everything they hit was into whatever dopey shift the Padres had on, or it was a well-hit fly ball that got run down by Jon Jay, who seems to have materialized with San Diego after essentially being a Mike Matheny All Star for so many years. Rea took a No Hitter into the 7th inning, which is an accomplishment in and of itself considering that Rea is a relative unknown and the Padres have never thrown a No Hitter, a plight we as Mets fans are familiar with but can no longer empathize.
Fortunately, Yoenis Cespedes finally hit a ground ball where a Padre infielder wasn't with 2 outs in the 7th inning and removed that potential stigma from the game. Still, Rea continued to mow down the Mets into the 9th, when they mounted an irritating 3-run rally. I say it's an irritating rally because yes, while it's nice that Granderson homered and Cespedes homered, all it did was just prolong the inevitable: To lose 5-3 instead of 5-0, but lose nonetheless.
At least it wasn't a 2-1 loss with Jay hitting the walk-off Home Run and pogo-sticking his way around the bases. Then again, the Mets still have 3 more games in San Diego. Anything's possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment