Except for the top of the sixth inning, Friday night at Citi Field was a pretty good game. The Mets scored five runs versus the Tampa Bay Rays and received five solid innings from Clay Holmes. Gotta like things of that nature occurring.
It’s a shame the top of the sixth, when Paul Blackburn and Max Kranick gave up the six runs that negated the 5-1 lead the Mets had built and essentially undid Holmes’s splendid limited-by-design start, had to happen. Otherwise, though, good game.
Well, maybe the bottom of the seventh inning lacked whatever makes a game good, as the bottom of the seventh wasn’t much of a half-inning from a Mets perspective. Loading the bases was excellent. Leaving them loaded — against Edwin Uceta, an ex-Met you blinked and missed in 2023 — was less excellent. Earlier, the Rays deployed Eric Orze out of the bullpen. You might have blinked and missed Eric when he was a Met last year. Anyway, good game, except for the top of the sixth and the bottom of the seventh.
Actually, the bottoms of the eighth and the ninth weren’t so great, either. In the eighth, Juan Soto rocketed a ball to right that somehow neither went out nor fell in. Looked promising off the bat, but it was just a third out. And the ninth was promising, too, right up to Ronny Mauricio striking out looking with the tying runs on base. Those could have been good innings for the Mets. Real good. But they weren’t.
Friday night wound up Rays 7 Mets 5, with the Mets stranding a dozen and going 2-for-16 with runners in scoring position while middle relief absolutely imploded. So maybe it wasn’t a good game. After winning six in a row, it’s hard to remember the Mets sometimes play games that qualify as less than good.
No good reason to take Holmes out after five innings.
Time to send Mauricio back to Triple-A. He had one mighty swat and many clueless K’s. Down the line he’ll be very good. Not now.
Blackburn is not what Mendy thinks he is.
The problem starts when 79 pitches and 5 innings is considered a quality start. Then is exacerbated by 2-16 with RISP. Just exactly how perfect can we expect a bullpen to be?
I accept that Holmes was capped at 85 pitches due to not feeling 100% after his Colorado start. The Mets need to be a little more careful with the converted reliever. I also accept piggybacking Blackburn, like he did in Colorado, to keep him stretched out to sub in for Senga. What I question is keeping Blackburn in for more than the required 3 batters with the Rays hitting liner after liner off him. I also question going to Kranick, who struggled after a strong start to the season before he was sent down, to put out Blackburn’s fire given that Brazoban, who’s been a fireman, was warming up earlier.
The 2 of 16 with RISP was frustrating. To the bullpen’s credit, they held it down after the 6th. The Mets offense should have tied the game at least.
Had to laugh yesterday with WFAN and others not concerned at all about Senga injury because of great Mets “depth” in starting pitching. Ignoring career bad-ness of Megill and Blackburn and Canning, Montas horrid in minors, Mendy wanting 6-man rotation, Holmes never a starter and the heraled Sproat with 5.16 era in minors and no one else ready down there….
“Good game, but the Mets lost” is roughly equivalent to “The operation was successful, but the patient died.”
Having said that, I’m not about to give up on the Mets because they lost a game (ok, spoiler alert, two games) against a pretty good Rays team. But the Senga injury is concerning. No team wants to lose their ace, no matter how well the rest of the rotation is pitching.