Mets can't overcome fast start by Ronald Acuna, Atlanta in road loss
Atlanta's Ronald Acuña Jr. (13) avoids the tag from Mets first baseman Pete Alonso (20) for a hit in the sixth inning on Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in Atlanta. Credit: AP/John Bazemore
ATLANTA — In the Mets’ 6-5 loss Tuesday night, Atlanta ran away with it — not on the scoreboard, but on the basepaths.
A particularly extreme early-season trend became relevant again when Ronald Acuna Jr.’s aggressiveness combined with Omar Narvaez’s recent inability to throw anybody out. Acuna stole three bases and scored three runs, all in the first half of the game.
The Mets’ catching tandem of Francisco Alvarez and Narvaez has allowed 21 steals — by far the most in the majors — and caught nobody thus far in a growing theme of the early season.
Narvaez, the backup, has allowed 11 steals in five games, making several uncompetitive throws in that stretch. Alvarez is charged with the other 10 in eight games. He was on the bench for a second time in four days because he was “beat up,” manager Carlos Mendoza said before the game.
No other club has allowed more than 14 steals. Of the others to cut down nobody, the Mets have allowed twice as many stolen bases as anybody else.
“We have to get better at it,” catching coach Glenn Sherlock said. “All around, as a team. It’s something we worked on hard in spring training and we haven’t been able to put it into play in the games yet. But we’re working on it, we’re talking about it. We’re gonna get better at it.”
Mendoza said: “It’s something that we will continue to work on, we will continue to talk about. But not concerned.”
Part of this can reasonably be attributed to small-sample-size funkiness, specifically the teams the Mets (4-7) have happened to play, a dynamic that Narvaez, Mendoza and Sherlock each noted.
The Reds and Brewers, for example, rank first and third in steals. And this week, the Mets have to defend against Acuna, the reigning NL MVP who swiped 73 bags last year.
But it was a problem last year, too, when Alvarez and Narvaez were their primary options (with lots of Tomas Nido mixed in). They ranked last in the majors in caught-stealing rate at 13%.
To be clear, catchers are far from the only piece of the running-game puzzle, even if such statistics usually are associated with them. The Mets have been trying to get their pitchers to assist via the variables they control: pickoff moves, holding the ball on the mound (to disrupt runners’ timing), the time it takes them to deliver a pitch. And infielders have to do their part on the other end.
“Those are all the things we have to do to improve,” Sherlock said. “Those are all things that we’re dealing with right now. The bottom line is we have to get better at it.”
When the Mets are facing a player or team with elite speed, what can they do to combat it?
“Keep them off the bases,” Narvaez said.
Acuna started quickly against righthander Adrian Houser (five innings, five runs). In the bottom of the first, he took second base and advanced to third on Narvaez’s third error, his throw straying well to the shortstop side of second base. Acuna scored on Ozzie Albies’ double.
Acuna did it again in the fourth, following his walk with steals of second and third during the same at-bat. Austin Riley brought him in with a single to center to pad the lead for Atlanta (7-3)
“Obviously, everybody is running on us,” Narvaez said. “But you also gotta know that we’re facing a pretty good running team.”
Those moments loomed large when the Mets’ late comeback bid fell just short.
Down by six after four innings, they brought the potential go-ahead run to the plate in the ninth. But Raisel Iglesias struck out Pete Alonso to end it. An inning prior, Alonso’s three-run home run cut the deficit in half.
They came close to a second wild win in a row — this one after Reynaldo Lopez’s six scoreless innings.
“The fight was there the whole game,” Mendoza said. “It shows a lot about this team."
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
