Middling, muddling Mets lose 10th in last 13 as Kodai Senga stumbles vs. Cardinals
Kodai Senga #34 of the Mets looks on after surrendering a third inning home run against Jordan Walker #18 of the St. Louis Cardinals at Citi Field on Saturday, June 17, 2023. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Mets are in a stretch of playing substandard baseball, and that means nothing is a given right now. Not a top-shelf start from Kodai Senga in the park where he’d had a 1.93 ERA in six starts. And certainly not a win against a St. Louis Cardinals team with the worst record in the National League.
It didn’t help matters that the Mets were playing a lineup missing the injured Pete Alonso and without Francisco Lindor — whose wife delivered their second daughter earlier in the day — until he pinch hit in the ninth inning.
Senga stumbled in the early innings and forced the Mets to battle from a three-run deficit. Luis Guillorme got them in striking distance with a two-run home run in the fifth inning, but that was about it. The Mets got the tying run on base in the seventh and eighth but ultimately fell to the Cardinals, 5-3, before 39,143 at windy and ultimately rainy Citi Field.
The Mets have lost 10 of their last 13 games.
“Losing is always hard . . . but I do feel kind of like [it’s been] unexplainable,” Lindor said. “It’s like ‘man, we just lost this . . . like what happened?’ And then we try to figure it out and then come back the next day. At some point, we’re going to turn it around.
“One of the good things about this stretch, most of the games we’ve been in it. It’s not like we’re just getting beat up every single night. We’re in there. We’ve given ourselves a chance to win games.”
After his first homer of the season, Guillorme had a one-out double in the seventh but was stranded at third. Brett Baty managed a one-out single in the eighth but didn’t reach scoring position.
After St. Louis added an insurance run on Dylan Carlson’s flare single in the ninth off Brooks Raley, the Mets brought the tying run to the plate three times in the ninth after Lindor was hit by a pitch. However, Jordan Hicks — he of the 103-mph fastball — fanned Guillorme, Brandon Nimmo and Starling Marte to end the game. The Mets were 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
“Today we played well. They just played better than us,” Lindor said. “They scored more runs than us. We ran out of innings.”
The St. Louis win made for a splendid final pitching performance for 41-year-old Adam Wainwright against the Mets in New York. The retiring longtime Cardinals ace pitched 6 1⁄3 innings, his longest outing of the season, and allowed three runs, seven hits and two walks with three strikeouts.
“We just couldn’t push through off Wainwright,” manager Buck Showalter said. “He’s the type of guy that if you get behind, it kind of plays into the way that he’s pitching. You’re trying to do too much and we start swinging at some borderline pitches, which is what he’s trying to do . . . If you’re aggressive and trying to make up a deficit with one swing, it plays into his hand.”
After Senga escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first without giving up a run, Nimmo hit a 407-foot homer to right-center on Wainwright’s first pitch, his ninth career leadoff home run.
The 1-0 lead was short-lived. The Cardinals scored three runs off Senga in the second inning on a run-scoring single by Brendan Donovan and a two-run homer by Paul Goldschmidt. Jordan Walker hit a solo shot off Senga in the third for a 4-1 lead.
The source of Senga’s struggle was poor control of his signature forkball and cutter, but he managed to right himself from the top of the fourth through his exit with two outs in the seventh. The only baserunner in that stretch came on an error by Guillorme.
“Mechanically, in the first three innings, I was a little bit off,” Senga said through an interpreter. “As the game went on, I was able to make adjustments on the fly.”
He allowed four runs, five hits, a walk and a hit batsman in 6 2⁄3 innings, striking out eight.
“Whatever happens, good or bad, he keeps [pitching],” Showalter said. “I don’t have much fault with him. I thought he handled himself well again, very competitive and got us deep in the game . . . [It was] a job done that helped his team and gave us a chance.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
