A quick review of how the Mets’ pitchers fared over the past week.
This meter is decidedly a mixed bag. On one hand, look at all the poop emojis. Not good. On the other hand, half of the players who earned poop emojis aren’t on the roster anymore and the new pitchers who replaced them—mostly trade acquisitions—have been great so far. The Mets’ bullpen had its shaky moments this week, but it has been revamped into a unit one can feel pretty confident about. However, the performances from the starting rotation this week leave a lot to be desired.
We’ll start with the worst performance of all, which was was Frankie Montas’ disastrous outing yesterday. He got shellacked. There’s really nothing else to say about it and we don’t need to speak of it again. However, what we should speak of (and probably won’t get recognized enough due to the lopsided result) is Austin Warren’s heroic work in relief. He soaked up four scoreless innings of work in relief of Montas yesterday, giving up just two hits and striking out five while walking one. His reward for his efforts is being sent back down to Triple-A for a fresh arm, unfortunately. Montas also pitched Monday’s game and was pretty good…until he wasn’t. He cruised through the first four innings with relative ease and then things snowballed on him extremely quickly in the fifth. Before you could blink, the Padres had scored five runs in the inning and taken the lead. Part of that was the fault of Huascar Brazobán, who in addition to pitching poorly in relief of Montas and failing to put the fire out, made an extremely costly defensive blunder by failing to cover first base on what ended up being scored an infield hit. Brazobán completely lost control of both the strike zone and the inning at large after that and then later was sent down to Triple-A. Brazobán is being stretched out down there to become a multi-inning guy, which is the niche the Mets still need filled with a more consistent presence.
The horrors did not end with Montas yesterday. Oh, no. Ryne Stanek had a nightmarish outing as well, earning him a poop emoji for this week as well. With Warren completely exhausted, Stanek was tasked with pitching the final inning of a lopsided game and could not even finish the inning. All told, he was charged with five runs in 2⁄3 of an inning, requiring position player Luis Torrens to record the final out of the inning. Stanek did make three other appearances this week, but they were not enough to save him from the poop emoji. He appeared in Monday’s game and helped keep things close with a scoreless seventh. Though the Mets were completely shut down in the series finale in San Diego, Stanek was part of a strong collective effort on the part of the bullpen in that game, contributing a scoreless sixth. Finally, Stanek also pitched in Friday’s game and gave up an insurance run to the Giants in the form of a pair of doubles by Jung Hoo Lee and Patrick Bailey in what was a shaky outing. That run ended up proving crucial in what turned out to be a close game.
David Peterson started Friday’s game and delivered yet another quality start, yielding just two runs over six innings of work. The Giants scored two runs off Peterson in the first inning and he settled down after that, giving up just four hits in total. He struck out four batters and walked two in the outing. He exited the game in line to take a loss, but the Mets rallied late to tie the game, only to fall in extras.
It was Edwin Díaz who ended up taking the loss on Friday for allowing the ghost runner to score on a Dominic Smith RBI single. That was Díaz’s only appearance this week. Ryan Helsley made his Mets debut in a tie game in the ninth preceding Díaz and sent the game to extras with a scoreless inning. Helsley gave up two hits in the inning, but recorded all three outs in the frame via the strikeout, showing Mets fans his impressive velocity and movement on his pitches.
Rico Garcia helped set up the Mets’ comeback on Friday with a scoreless eighth inning. He worked around a hit, striking out one batter. The Mets would go on to tie the game in the bottom of the inning. Garcia also contributed a Herculean effort to Monday’s game, settling things down after Brazobán’s meltdown with two scoreless innings complete with four strikeouts. The only blemish on Garcia’s week—and really his Mets tenure as a whole—came on Saturday when he gave up two runs in the ninth, but given that the Mets were up big, they were really a meaningless two runs. Still, the major leagues are unforgiving and Garcia was nonetheless designated for assignment following Saturday’s outing.
Gregory Soto took the loss on Monday, as the Padres beat the Mets in the ninth in walk-off fashion. The decisive run was unearned, but it was unearned because of Soto’s own throwing error. Soto turned his week around in his other outing on Saturday. He came into the game in the sixth inning with one out and allowed a single, but then bounced back to strike out the next two batters. This was a key performance since the game was still close at the time and it earned Soto his 20th hold of the season.
Luckily the Mets had their hitting shoes on for a change on Saturday because Kodai Senga was not sharp and had one of his worst outings of the season. All told, he was charged with four runs on five hits in five innings of work. He struck out four batters and walked three in the outing and was inconsistent with his command. But he avoided taking the loss because his teammates were able to bail him out.
And part of the credit for that goes to the bullpen, who locked things down after Senga’s early exit. Reed Garrett ended up earning the win for 1 1⁄3 hitless innings of work, complete with a strikeout. After Soto finished the sixth inning for Garrett, Tyler Rogers made his Mets debut in the seventh against his former team and worked around a hit to pitch a scoreless inning. Garrett was probably the standout performer in the bullpen this week, putting up a clean sheet across his two appearances and not giving up a single hit. Garrett also pitched in Wednesday’s loss, contributing 1 1⁄3 scoreless innings in that contest as well. He struck out two batters and walked one in that outing.
Garrett came into Wednesday’s game in the fourth inning because Clay Holmes could not make it out of the inning. Holmes gave up four runs in 3 2⁄3 innings, but only two of those four runs were earned. In the third inning with two outs, Francisco Lindor made a throwing error which allowed Jose Iglesias to reach base safely and then Gavin Sheets followed with a two-run homer. Still, Holmes wasn’t particularly good in the outing and departed the game after just 79 pitches. It didn’t end up mattering much because the Mets were completely shut down by Yu Darvish, but Holmes and Montas’ performances in particular do not exactly inspire confidence in the rotation for the stretch run.
Brooks Raley appeared in both Wednesday’s and Saturday’s games and pitched a scoreless inning in each of them, working around a walk each time. Raley has been fantastic since his return from Tommy John surgery and has yet to give up an earned run in 5 1⁄3 innings of work. Now with Soto in the fold, the Mets have another reliable left-handed arm to complement Raley as they try to manage his workload in his return.
José Buttó’s final outing as a Met was unfortunately a disaster. After giving up the go-ahead run in the sixth on Tuesday, Buttó came back out for a second inning of work and that’s when things really went south. He gave up two straight singles to lead off the seventh, struck out the next batter, but then gave up a two-run double that was a back-breaker for the Mets, turning a close game into a game rapidly falling out of reach. He recorded the second out and then walked a batter. That ended his appearance after 1 2⁄3 innings of work and he made way for Chris Devenski, who gave up a two-run homer to Manny Machado to blow the doors off the game. Buttó was charged with five runs in total and Devenski with one and the Padres cruised on to a 7-1 victory. Buttó was included in the trade to the Giants for Tyler Rogers and Devenski was optioned back to Triple-A Syracuse.
It’s a shame the bullpen let the game get away because Sean Manaea pitched a really good game on Tuesday. He gave up just one run on three hits in five innings of work, striking out four batters and walking none. Manaea left the game after 86 pitches as he is still being built back up. Manaea should eventually be going deeper into games, but the rest of the rotation (outside of Peterson) failing to do so has been a consistent problem that has put strain on the bullpen.