Laura Albanese: Mets' at-bats are getting worse as team slumps into old habits in loss to Marlins
Mets' Carson Benge reacts after striking out during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Marlins on Saturday in Miami. Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky
MIAMI — Oh, they’re back here again, are they?
You’d think returning to the scene of last season’s demise would imbue these Mets with a modicum of spunk, even if half of them weren’t here when their playoff hopes limped into interminable darkness — the result of an offense that looked as if it already had booked an October vacation in the Maldives.
But there they were Saturday, back at loanDepot Park, again facing a very beatable Marlins team and apparently primed to sprinkle acid rain on what had been a pretty OK May.
This time it came in the form of a 4-1 loss, a game in which they had only one hit entering the ninth inning. They ended up with three hits and scored their first run in 17 innings when Mark Vientos singled home Tyrone Taylor with one out left in the game.
In their 2-1 loss an evening earlier, Juan Soto collected two of the team’s three hits. And if you think the Marlins are some sort of secret pitching juggernaut, the Nationals managed to do the same on Thursday, with the Mets winning that series finale, 2-1.
It’s funny how quickly good feelings can evaporate, isn’t it? Especially when the at-bats Saturday were so reminiscent of the ghastly ones that marked their lifeless march through April.
After winning six of seven games, the Mets (22-30) have dropped four of their last five against two sub-.500 teams. The spark that led them to six comeback victories this month has gone dormant, and answers (again) are not coming easy.
Talk to Carlos Mendoza and he’ll say they’ve simply run into a stretch of good pitchers. Friday’s starter, Eury Perez, has a triple-digit heater and effectively mixed it with his off-speed pitches to stymie the Mets. Saturday’s starter, Max Meyer, has an expansive arsenal, is a spin king and routinely pounds the zone with nasty breaking stuff.
“It was one of those days where he had everything going for him,” Mendoza said. “Perez, even though he’s been struggling as of late, he was on yesterday, and [Saturday], another good pitcher.
“Yeah, we’re better. We’ve seen that. But we ran into two pretty good arms.”
But . . . that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Good teams can beat good pitchers, and though there certainly are going to be days when you run up against a buzzsaw, the Mets’ woes go beyond that.
They’ve scored one run or fewer in 14 games this year, tied with the Giants for the most in baseball. With respect to how difficult it is to be a major- league pitcher, they weren’t exactly dealing with a reincarnated Cy Young most of the time (they just sometimes made it look as if they were).
You can tip your cap to the other guy all you want, but eventually, you’ve got to consider why your head is always cold.
Let’s take Saturday, for instance: Mendoza correctly praised Meyer’s breaking ball, but the Mets also were highly tentative in the first few innings before expanding the zone in the latter half of the game. By the time the Marlins played their celebratory fireworks in left-center, the Mets had swung at only 50% of the fastballs Meyer (5-0) had thrown in the zone (compared with the Marlins swinging away at 77% of the in-zone fastballs from Freddy Peralta, who allowed a two-run double to Owen Caissie and a pair of solo home runs by Liam Hicks).
Those are the numbers after the Mets decided to be more aggressive. With Meyer cruising in the sixth, this was their in-zone swing breakdown: 55% on the four seam, 50% on the sweeper, 45% on the slider and 50% on the sinker.
To be fair, this hasn’t been a season-long trend. The Mets generally are good at swinging at pitches inside the strike zone (though their quality of contact hasn’t always been great). But it does make you consider how opponents are scouting their weaknesses and their inconsistent ability to adjust. It doesn’t help, either, that the bottom third of the lineup has been something of a black hole in recent days, making it easier for pitchers to dictate at-bats.
On in-game adjustments, Vientos said he definitely feels “like we come together and talk about the pitcher after one of us has an at-bat — we ask how the ball is spinning or how the velo on the fastball [is playing] and just try to address that.”
That’s all well and good, but for the layman fan, it can be hard to check out Gameday and see a pitch smack in the middle of the zone taken for a strike. But that can be deceiving, Mendoza said.
“It’s a hard slider there and then the sweeper,” he said of Meyer. “So yeah, they were good pitches to hit when you look at it on video, but seeing it live, they were sharp. It’s got a lot of bite to it.”
That’s fair, but the Mets should have the ability to bite back. We saw glimpses of it during that strong stretch against the Tigers and Yankees, and the first game against the Nationals, but they haven’t been able to build sustainable success.
Baseball is chock full of good and great pitchers, and that’s not an excuse this basement-dwelling team can afford to fall back on.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
