The Mets needed to be more aggressive at the plate. That’s what Luis Rojas said Monday of the key to improving their offense and getting more runs on the board. It didn’t matter.
On Tuesday, the Mets lost to the Marlins in Miami, 5-4, finishing with a grand total of five hits. Taijuan Walker couldn’t answer the call with a vintage start and put the Mets in a hole early in the game. And to make the night more frustrating for the Mets, their manager was ejected right in the middle of it all.
“Right now, we just got to start hitting,” said Rojas, who was ejected in the seventh for arguing called strikes with home plate umpire Stu Sheurwater. “We walked a few times tonight, which is a good sign, but we still chase on pitches and we made some bad swing decisions.”
Dominic Smith helped plate two of the Mets’ runners on sacrifice flies in the fourth and sixth innings. J.D. Davis followed that with a long double that bounced off the back right field wall to drive in their third run of the game.
The Mets managed to get within one run twice before the Marlins shut them down; the first time with an insurance run in the eighth and then killing their late rally after James McCann’s RBI double in the ninth.
It was like groundhog day, and it wasn’t just the batters who fell flat.
Their first-time All-Star pitcher has gone from amazing to awful almost overnight. Tuesday was just more of the same.
Walker, like Tylor Megill the day before, got bit by the long ball (twice) and allowed the Marlins to take a 4-0 lead by the third inning.
In the second, he gave up a home run to catcher Alex Jackson, who prior to Tuesday had exactly one major league hit on his resume. Walker attributed that shot to accidentally leaving a splitter over the middle of the plate that matched Jackson’s bat speed. But in the next inning, he gave up the second shot to Isan Diaz, who had seven big league homers coming in and was a career .178 hitter up to that point.
“It’s just a little stretch I’m going through with the long ball,” Walker said after the game.
He managed to get the Mets 5.2 innings and four strikeouts, but he also finished allowing eight hits, the four earned runs and two walks and his ERA climbed to 3.86.
“I think I’m going the right direction. Honestly,” Walker said. “I felt good and I felt like I finished really strong.”
The Mets (55-51), whose lead atop the NL East is dwindling away, dropped a second-straight game to the fifth-place Marlins (46-61).
To make matters more stressful for anyone glued to the standings, the Phillies, who are chasing the Mets, have chipped away at their lead in the division some more by beating the Nationals again on Tuesday.
So 1.5 games are all the stand between the NL East rivals, who meet on Friday.
Despite the struggles, the Mets say they aren’t panicking. They are instead looking at the positives and to the next game.
“These guys, they fought until the last out of the game, you saw it once again,” Rojas said. “I mean these guys are resilient and they’re gonna keep fighting.”
