The Mets fell to the Diamondbacks, 4-3, on Wednesday night at Citi Field. After the game, manager Carlos Mendoza and some of the players spoke about the game and other topics…
Ryne Stanek’s bad luck
Stanek has been great since joining the Mets last season, but he’s gone through a rough stretch of late.
Over his last three appearances, including Wednesday, he’s allowed five runs on seven hits and one walk, giving up the lead in all three games, including twice in the ninth inning in save situations against the Washington Nationals over the weekend. But Wednesday was a different animal for Stanek.
Coming in with one out in the seventh inning, he got his first batter out on a ground ball, but then he allowed a single hit 85.3 mph, before a broken-bat double (73.9 mph) and a two-run single by Geraldo Perdomo, hit 80.9 mph, gave Arizona the lead.
“Not being able to put hitters away, he gets ahead. Honestly, the ball is not bouncing his way. It’s like when hitters are in the middle of a slump,” Mendoza said of Stanek after the game. “Today, he got a groundball to third base, a groundball that somehow got through, a broken bat, soft single. It’s tough luck right now. Stuff is good, he just has to continue to fight through it.”
Stanek echoed his manager’s thoughts and is ready to just move forward.
“It doesn’t feel good. The last three times have not gone well results-wise. I can’t look at one pitch that I didn’t execute and the results were bad,” Stanek said. “Expected numbers on these balls are pretty good in my favor. Such is life. It sucks, it doesn’t feel good, no one’s going to feel bad for me, the job is to go execute. And hopefully, the next time they hit the balls at people instead.”
Before these last three games, Stanek’s ERA was at a minuscule 0.96 and has now ballooned to 5.06.
Moving forward without left-handed relievers?
Aside from Wednesday’s loss, the big Mets news comes from a duo of injured relievers. A.J. Minter continues to weigh his options after suffering a serious lat strain and now Danny Young is on the IL with a left elbow sprain that could result in Tommy John surgery.
Entering Wednesday’s game, the Mets were without a left-handed reliever, and that may not change any time soon. Mendoza was asked how the team will look to navigate not having a southpaw in the bullpen moving forward.
“We got some righties there that can get lefties out,” Mendoza explained. “Whether it’s [Jose] Butto, [Huascar] Brazoban, Reed Garrett, for sure, [Max] Kranick has been doing a really good job. We feel good with our options, now we have to decide what our next move is. We like our righties’ ability to get left-handed hitters out.”
Mets can’t come up with big hit
Probably the biggest takeaway from Wednesday’s loss was the Mets’ inability to hit with runners in scoring position. They left 13 runners on base and were 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.
Despite that, the Mets had a chance to win the game late. They loaded the bases with two outs in the ninth inning down by just one run, but could not come up with that clutch knock.
On the flip side, the Diamondbacks had limited chances with runners in scoring position but capitalized, going 1-for-5 and manufacturing runs late on sac flies.
“There’s a lot of different parts of the game you could look back on [as a reason we lost],” Mendoza said. “Not getting the big hit and they got the big hit, especially with two outs. We created some chances and couldn’t come through. You can make a case for that. We created a lot of traffic and we just came up short.”
For the season, the Mets are hitting .224 with RISP (25th in MLB). Their RISP OPS is .731 (15th).
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