Mets get messy in loss to Blue Jays, drop into NL wild-card tie
Pete Alonso of the New York Mets reacts after being called out on strikes in the seventh inning against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Tuesday. Credit: Getty Images/Vaughn Ridley
TORONTO — After the biggest moment of the late innings of the Mets’ 6-2 loss to the Blue Jays on Tuesday night, all Pete Alonso could do was shake his head.
He had engaged Toronto reliever Zach Pop in an 11-pitch duel, fouling off five consecutive full-count pitches during a rally in the top of the seventh, the Mets’ last real threat. Alonso wanted to pop one. Pop risked becoming predictable: sinker, sinker, sinker, sinker, sinker — all in the lower half of the zone, all catching a piece of Alonso’s bat but not a lot of it.
Finally, to end it, Pop changed things up with . . . another sinker, but on the upper, outer corner of the zone, just nipping the plate.
Plate umpire Dan Merzel ruled it strike three. The inning was over, the potential tying run stuck on deck. Alonso didn’t like it, briefly voicing his disagreement with Merzel before retreating to the dugout.
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“I got a couple pitches to hit late in the count. I’m happy I fouled them off and earned another pitch, earned another pitch,” Alonso said. “And then that last one — my initial reaction is oh, it was a ball. But looking back at the video, it was legitimately probably the most perfect pitch ever. It started way off the plate and then it just — I don’t know how it came back. It was an amazing pitch.”
It was that kind of night for the Mets (79-66), who wasted a few scoring chances, made a few defensive misplays and lost a winnable game. They fell back into a tie with Atlanta for the last National League wild-card spot.
“We won nine games in a row and things are really good, but you’re not going to win them all,” Brandon Nimmo said. “Sometimes the offense is going to struggle a little bit and you can’t really control when that is going to happen throughout a year.”
Lefthander David Peterson put the Mets in an early hole by allowing a season-high five runs (four earned) in a season-low-tying 4 1⁄3 innings — as close as he has come all year to a meltdown, even if this wasn’t quite that.
The Blue Jays (69-77) struck for a four-run third inning that wound up setting the tone for the night.
That sequence began with Daulton Varsho bunting for a single and advancing to second on Peterson’s throwing error. Ernie Clement singled on a line drive that leftfielder Jesse Winker slid for but merely knocked down.
Davis Schneider provided the big blow: a two-out, two-run triple. He scored on Joey Loperfido’s single.
“I need to stop their momentum,” said Peterson, whose ERA rose to 2.98. “I wasn’t able to slow the game down soon enough and it snowballed. I need to be able to stop those innings — like I have been — sooner.”
Manager Carlos Mendoza said: “He just didn’t have it.”
Toronto added a run in the seventh when Spencer Horwitz doubled over rightfielder DJ Stewart’s head to bring in Clement (triple).
Stewart’s non-play and Winker’s earlier near-catch put on display the gamble Mendoza made in authoring a lineup that featured perhaps the Mets’ worst defensive outfield for the sake of a platoon advantage. Against Blue Jays righty and former Met Chris Bassitt, Mendoza wanted to play as many lefthanded hitters as possible, which meant rolling with an outfield of Winker, Nimmo and Stewart.
“We didn’t make a couple plays,” Mendoza said. “Gave them extra outs, extra 90 feet. They’re going to make you pay here in the big leagues.”
The offensive portion of that equation didn’t work out either. Bassitt gave up one run in six innings, settling in after first-inning trouble for one of his best starts in a difficult two-plus months. He yielded five hits (three in that opening frame), walked one and struck out eight.
“The thing with knowing Bassitt well is knowing that if he’s hitting his spots, he’s really tough,” Nimmo said of his 2022 teammate. “When he’s on and he’s got his velocity like he did today — we’ve seen it over the course of the season — he’s a really good pitcher.”
Notes & quotes: Mendoza moved a slumping Nimmo to fifth in the batting order, his first start anywhere lower than fourth since 2021 . . . Paul Blackburn (back discomfort) wasn’t feeling much better, so he won’t pitch against the Phillies this weekend, Mendoza said. Tylor Megill will get at least one more start. He’s in line for Sunday against the Phillies but Mendoza noted that he could get flipped to Monday against the Nationals, a lesser opponent . . . ESPN picked up Phillies-Mets on Sept. 22 — the last Citi Field game of the regular season — as a “Sunday Night Baseball” exclusive . . . Francisco Lindor is 1-for-his-last-18.
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
