When you’re on a winning streak, everything just seems to break your way.
When you’re on a losing streak, everything just seems to fall apart spectacularly right in front of you.
Saturday night’s game may have been one of the more difficult losses of the season for the Mets who scored one run at a time for four consecutive innings. Things completely imploded in the 7th inning where Ronny Mauricio misplayed a difficult hop allowing two runs to score. The Mets thought they were out of the inning getting William Contreras to pop out but the umpire called a late pitch clock violation. Contreras got another chance and slammed a two-run home run, which personally broke my spirit.
The team needs to win a game! Winning generally fixes everything!
Sean Manaea has pitched 23 innings over five games this season with a 3.52 ERA, 3.54 FIP, 0.957 WHIP and a 113 ERA+. The line for Manaea’s last start (five runs over 5 2/3) doesn’t accurately describe what happened. Manaea was really cruising through the first five innings. He allowed no runs, producing a mix of flyouts and groundouts and barely any strikeouts. His pitch count was low and the feeling was that he would be the first pitcher not named David Peterson in over a month to give the Mets six innings. Things just fell off the rails in the fifth inning with the Guardians scoring five runs. Hopefully the Mets get the first five inning version of Manaea and hopefully he can go deep into the game. The Brewers have the following numbers against him:
- William Contreras 3-9, 2B, 2 BB, 4 K
- Sal Frelick 1-4, K
- Joey Ortiz 0-4
- Blake Perkins 1-4
- Brice Turang 5-5, 2 2B
- Andrew Vaughn 1-6, 2B, BB, K
- Christian Yelich 0-6, 3 K
The Mets bats will have to deal with Quinn Priester this afternoon who leads the league with a .846 winning percentage. Priester has pitched 114 1/3 innings over 21 games (16 starts) with a 3.15 ERA, 4.01 FIP, 1.190 WHIP and a 128 ERA+. Over his last four starts he has a 1.75 ERA and 3.14 FIP striking out 23 batters over 25 2/3 innings. The Mets have the following career stats against him:
- Pete Alonso 1-2, 2B, BB
- Francisco Alvarez 0-3, K
- Francisco Lindor 2-3, 2B
- Jeff McNeil 1-2
- Cedric Mullins 0-2
- Brandon Nimmo 1-3
- Juan Soto 0-2, BB
- Mark Vientos 0-3, 2 K
Three Things To Watch For:
- Pete Alonso. Pete Alonso hit his 252nd career home run Saturday night, which ties the franchise record for home runs with Darryl Strawberry. He’s just one swing away from standing alone as the most feared power bat in Mets history. Alonso’s chase comes at a time where the Mets desperately need a spark and positive vibes. Here’s hoping Alonso causes all of that to happen to the Mets today!
- Juan Soto. Soto has homered on back-to-back days six times this season. Saturday was the first time that he homered on back-to-back-to-back days (honestly, I’m not sure if that technically means he has now homered seven times on back-to-back days now). Anyway, he looks to homer for a fourth straight game this afternoon. This batting line during this streak has been predictive descriptive of what’s happening to the Mets right now. In three consecutive games he has gone 1-for-4 with a solo home run.
- Brice Turang. I cannot wait for the Mets to never face Brice Turang again. Turang is 3-for-7 with two home runs and a stolen base so far this series. He is perfect against Sean Manaea going 5-for-5 with two doubles. Turang has played 14 games against the Mets slashing .354/.404/.625. For context, his career slash line is .251/.315/.350 (86 OPS+). The Mets need to find a way to contain Turang today.
Let’s Go Mets!
