The horrors persist, but so do we.
I can’t say any good things about tonight’s Mets game, an uninspiring 5-0 loss to the Braves, if I’m being honest. But at the very least, I can say that the Mets did not wait until the very late innings to rip our hearts out, instead mercifully taking themselves out of this game from the start.
Early on, as in, the very first pitch of the game, as Ronald Acuña Jr. connected with Paul Blackburn’s very first pitch and sent it over the center field wall to give Atlanta an immediate 1-0 lead. They would go on to tack on two more, as Alex Verdugo singled, Austin Riley walked, and then Matt Olson moved them over with a grounder to first. In one of the more bizarre plays you will see, the Braves got their second ball when Blackburn bounced a pitch and Luis Torrens, inexplicably, stopped the rolling ball with his glove, which is illegal and forced a run home. The third run came in on a sacrifice fly. Things could have been worse in the second, when Ozzie Albies led off with a triple, but Blackburn buckled down to retire the next three batters and the right-hander, to his credit, retired the side in order in the third to settle the game down a bit.
Unfortunately, Chris Sale, the reigning NL Cy Young Award recipient, was pitching for Atlanta, and that was not a recipe for success for New York in this one. Sale struggled at the onset of the season, and it looked like he may have hit a serious regression after his surprise Cy Young campaign last year following some down years at the tail end of his Red Sox tenure. Alas, he has found his way, which was bad news for New York on this Wednesday night. Through the first three innings, the Mets mustered just two Starling Marte singles and a Brandon Nimmo walk. Each of those happened in separate innings, so the Mets could not piece together any sort of scoring opportunity. The Mets then followed that up by going down 1-2-3 in the fourth as Sale continued to cruise.
The Blackburn Express hit a snag once again in the fourth. With one out, Ozzie Albies picked up his second extra base hit of the game, a double with one out. He moved to third on a ground out and, with Blackburn on a 70-75 pitch limit, he was removed in favor of José Buttó. He then allowed the fourth run to score on a wild pitch, but he recovered to retire Acuña Jr.
If you expected the Mets’ offense to adjust to Sale as the game wore on, you expected wrong. Jeff McNeil picked up a one-out single in the fifth, which extended his league-best on base streak to 20 games, but he was stranded at first base. The 2-3-4 in the Mets’ order went down meekly in the sixth, and Sale took the mound in the seventh with only 80 pitches on his record. He struck out Nimmo swinging on a 3-2 pitch, then got Torrens—who had a horrible game at the plate and behind it—to ground out and, after a Tyrone Taylor single, got McNeil to ground out to end the frame.
I could continue to bore you with the play-by-play, but nothing particularly noteworthy happened from that point forward. Olson homered in the seventh against Ty Adcock, and Justin Garza completed a perfect inning with three grounders to McNeil. On the bright side, a Nimmo two-out bloop single prevented Sale from his first complete game since 2019, aka before his Tommy John Surgery. Hooray?
The Mets will try to salvage the series finale tomorrow night, with Clay Holmes taking the hill for the Mets to play stopper against Spencer Strider.
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Box scores
Win Probability Added
Fangraphs.com
Big Mets winner: Starling Marte, +1.8% WPA
Big Mets loser: Paul Blackburn, -17.6% WPA
Mets pitchers: -29.5% WPA
Mets hitters: -20.5% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Brandon Nimmo second inning walk, +3.4% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Ronald Acuña Jr. leadoff home run, -9.9% WPA