Let’s see…nine innings coming to bat…six innings with runners reaching…two innings with runners scoring…no more than one run scoring in any one inning.
That’s not a lot of offense to work with, and the Mets didn’t make it work [1] for them. Five base hits, four walks, one hit-by-pitch, three opposition errors, yet all of two runs on a sunny Southern California Sunday afternoon that turned cloudy when the Mets couldn’t do nearly enough with Griffin Canning — Griffin Canning, for all your canning needs — or anything at all versus three Angel relievers. The Mets’ best chance to score in the late innings came when Francisco Lindor hit a foul ball that was briefly and mistakenly called a home run before correction kicked in.
Two runs can win you a game if your pitching doesn’t allow quite that many in return [2] runs in return. Met pitching wasn’t quite that effective. Jose Quintana gutted out five frames of three-run ball, and though the combined efforts of relievers Adam Ottavino, Danny Young and Phil Maton were close to spotless, the horse had already inched out of the barn and wandered onto I-5.
Angels 3 Mets 2, on the heels of Angels 5 Mets 4, made for a very deflating first stop on a very challenging road trip at a very critical juncture of the schedule amid a very competitive Wild Card race. It’s never a very good time to lose games, especially to a subpar opponent (not that you could tell one team’s aptitude from the other’s in this series), super-especially when you’re facing a pitcher who entered the day with a record of 3-10 alongside an ERA of 5.25 that indicated the record was not misleading. Well, now Griffin Canning, who fanned eight over five, is 4-10, and the Mets are a game-and-a-half off the playoff pace and, more concerning, a little pulseless. Since J.D. Martinez’s grand slam on Saturday night [3], they’ve gone eleven innings with only a tiny bit of clutch hitting and almost no scoring whatsoever. It’s not an extensive sample size, but it’s been kind of boring, which is something the Mets haven’t been all that much this season. Ostentatiously bad early. Extravagantly good later. Dull, though? Somebody needs to take the field dressed as Grimace or something.
It’s just two games, one hopes. On to St. Louis, Colorado, Seattle, wherever. The journey continues. Perhaps they can replenish their mojo somewhere along the way.