Bad vibes have crept into Citi Field, and that's a dooming sign for the Mets
Mets first baseman Pete Alonso reacts as he pops out against the Athletics during the ninth inning of an MLB game at Citi Field on Thursday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Mets’ sketchy choice for Thursday’s ceremonial first-pitch thrower, a “viral sensation” in social-media parlance, didn’t project the greatest vibe for a Citi Field matinee attended by thousands of summer campers.
Regardless of where your sensibilities landed on this celeb-du-jour, however, everyone would agree that it wasn’t the most distasteful performance of the afternoon.
That dubious honor went to the Mets, who somehow turned a get-right homecoming series against the A’s into a mid-August horror show, and Thursday’s intolerable 7-6 loss was as hideous to watch as it was painful to endure.
The Mets basically did everything they could to hand the game to the A’s by issuing 11 walks, teeing up 12 hits and blowing a 5-0 lead, helped along by a Jose Quintana slurve that JJ Bleday belted two rows deep into the rightfield seats for a fourth-inning grand slam.
Before that Bleday swing, the going-nowhere A’s should’ve mentally checked out — they had a plane waiting — if not for Quintana’s charitable efforts of continuing to put them on the bases. That was the theme of a slogfest that incredibly dragged on for 3 hours and 45 minutes, the longest nine-inning game (by a minute) since the pitch clock was implemented at the start of last season. Just for a point of reference, the average time for a regulation game this year is 2 hours and 36 minutes, so you can imagine the ugliness necessary for Thursday’s pace.
The A’s stranded 16 — leaving the bases loaded three times — and went 3-for-14 with runners in scoring position. They still won, thanks in large part to Quintana being allergic to the strike zone. Five Mets relievers followed with seven walks, and it was Reed Garrett who surrendered the deciding run on Seth Brown’s RBI single in the sixth.
“When we struggled early in the year, that was one of the main issues — the free passes,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Too many non-competitive pitches and today was not a good day. We saw it from the beginning . . . It’s hard to win a baseball game when we give up 11 walks and a hit-by-pitch. That’s hard to do.”
Mendoza was clearly annoyed during the postgame media session. Can you blame him? The Mets seemingly had shaken off their West Coast jet lag in tying the series with Wednesday’s convincing 9-1 victory, which snapped a four-game losing streak, and Mark Vientos appeared to finish the A’s all by himself when his second home run (in three at-bats) supplied a 5-0 lead after three innings.
The storyline was set. Mendoza looked like a genius moving Vientos into the No. 2 spot for the ailing Brandon Nimmo, who was sidelined with a stomach bug, and the Mets should’ve been on cruise control from that second homer, his 19th of the season. But with the pitching staff lulling the other Mets to sleep, having them stand around watching the A’s shuffle around the bases, they had only three singles the rest of the way.
The Mets are now 5-8 in August, and 13-13 since the All-Star break, their comet-like run through the majors cooling off considerably. It’s not the best timing for a team trying to keep up in an NL wild-card race with a pair of front-runners sprinting ahead (Padres, D-backs) and Atlanta once again being a pain for their Flushing pals.
“I think we just stay even- keel,” Vientos said. “I feel like we don’t let this get to us. Baseball is never a straight line. There’s always ups and downs. Right now, it’s down, but . . . the ball’s gonna fall on our side pretty soon.”
There’s no guarantee of that, especially when the Mets’ pitching staff is throwing far too many balls and not nearly enough strikes. It’s a recipe for disaster, no matter who they’re playing, and if the A’s were a more dangerous team — like the Orioles, coming to Citi next week — Thursday’s one-run loss would’ve been a blowout instead. And the Mets are getting too deep into this stretch run to give away these games.
“This is the toughest month in baseball, in my opinion,” J.D. Martinez said. “And it’s just one of those things that we talked about, that ‘who cares?’ mentality — if we win, we win, if we lose, we lose, what does it matter? — that’s what got us here. That’s what we got to ride out to the end of the season.”
Martinez was referencing the clubhouse meeting at the end of May, when the spiraling Mets rallied around the idea of playing with no expectations and responded with a season-saving run over the next two months. But now, as the pressure ratchets up to its highest levels of the year, Martinez said it’s again become a topic of conversation among the players, with the mindset of staying loose down the stretch. To not let stomach-turning games like Thursday undo everything the Mets have accomplished up to now.
“We’re talking about having a sense of urgency and we just didn’t get the job done,” Mendoza said. “We just got to turn the page.”
From the first pitch to the last, Thursday was a regrettable afternoon for the Mets, full of mistakes they can’t keep repeating.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
