The New York Mets had a chance to win their second straight series, but lack of focus helped cause the loss.
The New York Mets suffered a tough extra-innings loss to the St. Louis Cardinals today, and the 2-1 defeat in 11 innings also led to the Mets’ first series loss of the season as they dropped back-to-back games yesterday and today.
This was a tough loss for several reasons. The Mets wasted a fine pitching performance from starter Freddy Peralta, who gave New York 5-1/3 innings of one-run ball that included seven strikeouts to go with a pair of walks.
The Mets also wasted some brilliant bullpen work from Brooks Raley, Luke Weaver and Devin Williams, and swing man Tobias Myers got tagged with an undeserved loss on an unearned run despite pitching well in the extra frames.
The disturbing lack of focus that sunk the Mets season last year also resurfaced, with the chief culprit being shortstop Francisco Lindor, who had a very tough day indeed. Start with an unfortunate base running lapse in the first inning when Lindor apparently forgot how many outs there were, which gave the Cardinals an easy out and helped kill a possible Mets rally.
Lindor’s worst gaffe happened in the sixth, though, when he reached first base via an error, which looked like a break for the Mets. But Lindor promptly got picked off first on a play where he wasn’t anywhere near first base, and his mistake was amplified when the next hitter, Juan Soto, hit a home run that became the Mets only run of the day. Lindor also had an error in the field, so he was a liability in nearly all aspects of the game, and Soto barely ran at all on his home run, which would have been a bad look indeed given that it barely made it out in right.
Both teams struggled to score all day, especially in extra innings. The frustration reached a climax in the bottom of the 11th when rookie right fielder Carson Benge got a late read on a pop up by Masyn Winn that became the winning hit when Benge’s diving attempt fell short of the ball.
No summary of this game would be complete without at least a mention of the Mets’ hitting issues with runners in scoring position. At one point in this game Mets announcer Gary Cohen mentioned that the Mets’ RISP numbers were 6-for-42, and while the sample size is small, that’s an alarming number.
Mets fans were expecting better, and those expectations aren’t just due to subpar performance. The Mets were supposed to be smarter about playing clean fundamental baseball, and today they did the opposite of that in a tight game that went to extra innings, which is exactly when this sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen.