This Wasn’t on My Bingo Card

Losing two out of three to the Nationals this weekend was the first true hiccup of the season for the Mets. That it took until September to have the hiccups is amazing. But it’s the absolute wrong time.

Carlos Carrasco returned from injury today, and he threw a lot of strikes against the Nationals. But they were hitting him hard, as one thing that’s worse than being wild out of the strike zone is being wild in the strike zone (at least that’s what Tim McCarver taught me when I was growing up.) Carrasco gave up the Nationals first run in his first five pitches of the game as Lane Thomas doubled and Luis Garcia singled him in. Jeff McNeil got it back in the 2nd inning on a sac fly, but it fell apart for Carrasco in the third. Thomas started this rally with a one out single (he’s going to be a problem), and then Carrasco got Garcia to ground out to McNeil for what could have been a double play. But McNeil was rushing it and he bobbled the ball to put runners on first and second with nobody out.A single by Joey Meneses loaded the bases, and then Carrasco struck out Luke Voit and then you thought that he had righted the ship. But Keibert Ruiz hit one hard off him for a two run single to make it 3-1.

Carrasco then walked Cesar Hernandez to load the bases again. I was in the ballpark trying to think along with Buck, and I don’t disagree with him often but at that point, with Trevor Williams in the bullpen, I would have pulled Carrasco. He was obviously on a pitch count, and in my mind, this rubber game against a lowly team was one you had to have. So I would have tried to stop the bleeding with Williams at that point. If Carrasco was a fully healthy pitcher and not one coming back from injury with a pitch count, maybe I give him that one extra batter that a veteran has earned. But at this point, I wouldn’t have taken a chance. Buck did, and it cost him as Cookie gave up a single to Ildemaro Vargas to make it 5-1, and all of the air was let out of the balloon.

Williams saved the bullpen, but he gave up a two run dinger to Herandez to finish the scoring at 7-1, so maybe not giving Cookie one more batter wouldn’t have really amounted to a hill of beans after all. Meanwhile, the Mets spent their second game in a row not producing off a pitcher they should have torched. Although the outs acquired by Eric Fedde were noticeably louder than the ones that Patrick Corbin earned on Saturday … louder in a way that Spencer Strider would say “doesn’t feel good, does it?”. But it doesn’t matter, because one run is one run, and with the Braves not having any hiccups a bad team, it just isn’t going to be good enough down the stretch. The difference is that I trust this team to take a breath and right the ship against a team like Pittsburgh, who may be great in five years but right now they’re just roadkill. If the Mets don’t right the ship against Pittsburgh, then they will be the roadkill with the Braves just one game back and getting ready to take some batting practice against Oakland.