The Mets are officially in their first losing streak of the season, dropping three games in a row and five games of their last six. Their pitching the last couple of nights have kept them in games but the offense has fallen completely flat.
The Mets will have break this streak in the most difficult way possible. The bats will need to exorcise their demons against Garrett Crochet. Tylor Megill will need to figure out how to put his terrible month of May behind him as he faces one of the more potent offenses in baseball.
Tylor Megill has a 3.74 ERA, 3.13 FIP, 1.385 WHIP and a 104 ERA+ over 43 1/3 innings. If all of his starts were about the same, we would be pretty happy with this stat line from Megill – but he’s really had two different seasons so far. In his first five games he had a 1.09 ERA, 2.35 FIP. In his four starts since then he has a 7.23 ERA with a 4.32 FIP. His strikeouts are high, 26 in 18 2/3 innings during his tough streak, but teams are scoring on him. The Red Sox have the following career numbers against him:
- Wilyer Abreu 0-1, K
- Alex Bregman 2-5
- Rafael Devers 0-1
- Jarren Duran 1-2, 2B
- Nick Sogard 1-1
- Connor Wong 1-2, K
The Red Sox off-season was built around acquiring Garrett Crochet. He has delivered so fart his season with a 2.00 ERA, 2.80 FIP, 1.063 WHIP and a 207 ERA+ over a league leading 10 starts and league leading 63 innings. In half of his starts this season he has allowed zero runs or one run. Luckily for the Mets, he’s coming off of a start where he allowed two runs! (Over seven innings). Crochet faced the Mets last September when the White Sox were controlling his innings. The solo home run they hit off of him was the only run he allowed over 3 1/3 innings. Crochet struck out eight Mets hitters, representing 80% of the outs he recorded. The Mets have the following career stats against him:
- Pete Alonso 0-2, 2 K
- José Azócar 0-1, K
- Francisco Lindor 1-3, HR, K
- Starling Marte 0-3, K
- Tyrone Taylor 0-1, K
- Luis Torrens 0-2, K
- Mark Vientos 1-2, K
Three Things to Watch For:
- Hitting with RISP / Hitting home runs. Neither team did a good job hitting with runners in scoring position Tuesday night. The Mets went 0-for-7 and the Red Sox went 0-for-4. The two teams combined left only 13 runners on base – there just wasn’t a lot of hitting. But the Red Sox got a two solo home runs that made all the difference. The Mets as a team haven’t hit a home run since May 13th. At some point this will just course correct. It’s just happening during the Mets toughest stretch of games in the season to date.
- Francisco Lindor. Before Tuesday night’s game Lindor was mired in a 1-for-21 slump. He’s not out of it yet, but he had a positive night last night going 1-for-3 with a single that came off of his bat 107 mph. He also hit a scorching ground ball (98.6 mph) that unfortunately became a double play. He’s the only player on the Mets who has homered against tonight’s starter, Garrett Crochet.
- Bullpens are in opposite places. The Red Sox effectively pitched a bullpen game Tuesday night with Buehler returning from the injured list limited to only two innings. Tonight they have the league leader in innings pitched, so they hoping to give most of the bullpen the night off (although several of their high leverage guys have now pitched in back-to-back games). The Mets are the opposite right now, only Kranick, Castillo and Buttó have pitched in the last two nights. With a day off tomorrow everyone else should be available tonight.
Let’s Go Mets!
