Matt Harvey can't save Mets as they're swept by bottom-feeder Marlins
Matt Harvey wipes his face during the first inning of a game against the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park. (June 2, 2013) Credit: Getty
If by season's end, the Marlins manage to find a detour away from history, if they manage to avoid setting the modern record for the most losses in a single season, if they score just enough runs to avoid the title of weakest offense ever, they can thank the Mets.
Even Matt Harvey couldn't spare the Mets from an 11-6 loss Sunday to the Marlins, their most embarrassing defeat of the season and the concluding flourish in an unsightly three-game sweep by a group that could go down as the worst team in baseball history.
"We don't have much room to talk, ourselves," Mets captain David Wright said. "Talking about we should beat this team, we should beat that team. There's probably a lot of teams saying that about us right now."
The loss wrapped up a decisive swing in momentum for the Mets, who came to Miami riding high. They had won five straight games, including four in a row against the Yankees to complete their first Subway Series sweep. But against the Marlins, who had lost nine straight, the Mets were outscored 24-8 over three games.
"You feel like you're playing pretty good baseball," Wright said. "You squeak out a couple of close ones. You have a couple just good all-around games. Then you go to the opposite end of that spectrum. We're really not doing much right."
Indeed, the road to the Mets' latest loss was lined with missteps from several sources. It began with Harvey, who allowed four runs and a career-high 10 hits in just five innings. It continued with reliever Scott Rice, who inherited a two-run lead in the sixth inning, walked three straight Marlins and gave up three runs, two on Marcell Ozuna's double. It ended with an offense that managed one infield hit in the last four innings.
Centerfielder Rick Ankiel, brought in for his defensive prowess, misplayed a line drive by Ozuna that became a two-run triple in the first. And manager Terry Collins stuck with Rice despite an uncharacteristic lack of command, pulling the struggling reliever only after he had surrendered the lead.
"This one was tough to take," Collins said. "Certainly, there was a lot of things unexpected today."
Indeed, Harvey fell behind 4-1 through two innings, though the Mets' sluggish offense managed to claw its way back into the game. Lucas Duda and Omar Quintanilla hit solo shots in the second and third innings and struggling Ike Davis followed with a tying two-run shot in the fourth, his first homer since April 25.
In the fifth, the Mets pushed ahead on two-out RBI singles by Marlon Byrd and Davis, who had three RBIs. But with Harvey at 100 pitches through five innings, Collins turned the game over to the bullpen.
Television cameras caught Harvey's reaction -- a roll of his eyes. The bullpen, which squandered the 6-4 advantage, gave the righthander even more reason to be steamed.
Said Collins: "After we got the lead, I think when they got it right back, it was kind of a deflating part of the game."
The Marlins, by far the lowest-scoring offense in baseball, punctuated the rout in the eighth. Mets-killer Greg Dobbs hammered a pitch from LaTroy Hawkins down the rightfield line for a three-run homer. With that, the Marlins' garish home run sculpture in leftfield went off, in celebration of the Mets' misery.
With what might be one of the lowest-scoring offenses in the modern era, the Marlins remain on pace to lose 117 games. Nevertheless, they tied a season high with 16 hits -- four each by 31-year-old rookie Ed Lucas and Chris Coghlan -- and improved to 6-3 against the Mets.
"They were struggling just as bad, if not worse offensively than we were, and they came in and beat us up pretty good," Wright said. "It's just all in all not a good series. There wasn't much that went right for us."
