The Mets’ offense has gotten off to a slow start this season.
Other than Pete Alonso, who has been their biggest catalyst to this point, New York hasn’t been able to get much going consistently and they’ve mainly been carried by their dominant early-season pitching.
Francisco Lindor has shown some positive signs but he doesn’t look like himself. Juan Soto has been his usual on-base machine but he isn’t hitting for much power. Brandon Nimmo is starting to turn things around and Mark Vientos is struggling mightily.
This team has been generating a ton of opportunities, but they simply haven’t been able to come up with that big hit when they’ve needed it the most — like they did so often during last year’s run to the NLCS.
That was again the case in Saturday afternoon’s loss to the Athletics.
Left-hander David Peterson threw well but he was outdone by former Mets prospect J.T. Ginn who limited them to just one run on four hits while walking two and striking out six across 5.1 innings of work.
“Man he was really good,” Carlos Mendoza said. “He was effective. The movement on his pitches was unbelievable today. That sinker was really good then the cutter, nothing was straight — everything was in to righties then away, same to lefties.
“He made some big pitches when he needed to. We created a little bit of traffic on the bases but we couldn’t string together a rally. He was really really good today.”
New York’s lone run came on a Nimmo homer and they left eight men on base, finished an ugly 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position.
That marked the ninth time through 14 games that the Mets have finished with three or less runs scored — and they haven’t exactly faced some big-time pitching aside from Sandy Alcantara and the opening series in Houston.
While times are tough, the skipper remains confident that they’ll break through soon.
“We have too many good hitters in that lineup not to,” he said. “Right now we have Pete being the one who is pretty much carrying us — but the fact that we are creating traffic and we’re getting guy on-base, they’ll step up.
“I like Nimmo’s at-bat, Vientos is just not getting results but he continues to hit the ball hard and he’s not chasing which is a good sign — like I said, one through nine we have a good offense and they’ll come through.”
The hope is that’ll start in Sunday’s series finale against old friend Luis Severino.
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