Nothing doing in L.A. as Mets draw blank vs. Dodgers
Taijuan Walker of the Mets delivers a pitch against the Dodgers during the first inning at Dodger Stadium on Thursday in Los Angeles. Credit: Getty Images/Katelyn Mulcahy
LOS ANGELES — Buck Showalter refuses to play into the hype games, the narrative, the public excitement. And that is OK. Mets-Dodgers doesn’t need to be considered anything more than what it is: a fun-looking midseason series between the teams with the best records in the National League. Without overstating things, it is a test, if any four-game stretch can be, for the Mets — and for the Dodgers, for that matter.
In part one of that test Thursday night, the Mets lost, 2-0, the first time this year they have been shut out. That snapped their longest win streak of the season at six games.
Tony Gonsolin lowered his ERA to 1.59, best in the NL, with six scoreless innings. Brusdar Graterol, Daniel Hudson and Craig Kimbrel followed with an inning each.
“That’s a team that you have to battle every single inning,” Starling Marte said through an interpreter. “They play the game hard, and that’s what we strive to go do. We have to match the intensity inning by inning when we play them.”
The Mets (35-18) mustered three hits. The Dodgers (34-17) had four hits from their bottom two hitters.
Much of the game was a pitchers’ duel between Taijuan Walker and the Gonsolin, a pair of righthanders who featured their splitters heavily.
Walker allowed two runs and seven hits in 5 2/3 innings, walking one and striking out two. He held Los Angeles to 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position.
“Usually that’s good enough for a win,” Showalter said.
The Dodgers got him for a run in each of his final two frames, but Walker pitched around hard contract all night.
The average hit speed of the Dodgers’ batted balls against Walker was 94.6 mph. Anything at or above 95 is considered hit hard. Average is in the mid-to-low 80s.
“I was a little frustrated,” Walker said. “I feel like the past couple outings I’ve just been a two-pitch pitcher: fastball and splitter. I’ve been working on my slider the pats couple weeks, but it isn’t quite there yet.”
In the fifth inning, Chris Taylor and Gavin Lux — the last two hitters in the batting order — had back-to-back singles to set up leadoff man Mookie Betts, who also singled. That brought in Taylor with the first run of the game.
Trea Turner doubled to lead off the sixth, extending his hitting streak to 25 games, and scored with two outs when Justin Turner double to rightfield. Marte had a chance of catching the ball, which instead went off the wall.
“When I was tracking it, I felt that the wall was a little closer. That’s why I ended up jumping,” Marte said. “But the ball stayed in the park. I was the one that missed it. That’s a play that I have to make there.”
Showalter added: “If Starling can’t catch it, nobody can.”
The Mets, meanwhile, didn’t have a hit until the fourth, a single from Luis Guillorme. He was batting third — the first start of his career in any of the Nos. 2-5 spots — and playing shortstop in place of Francisco Lindor. Lindor was unavailable because he slammed his right middle finger in a hotel door Wednesday night.
The Mets didn’t have an extra-base hit until the fifth (J.D. Davis double with two outs).
That was all they managed against Gonsolin, who after several seasons of being an effective spot starter/swingman has been perhaps the Dodgers’ most effective starting pitcher this season (in a rotation that is missing Clayton Kershaw, who is out with a back injury, has featured slightly-less-than dominant versions of Walker Buehler and Julio Urias).
What did Gonsolin do well against the Mets?
“What he’s been doing to the whole league,” Showalter said. “He’s a good pitcher. We knew that coming in . . . He had a lot of different looks, different shapes and did what we thought he would do.”
Backing him up was defense of a quality that the Mets have not seen when playing the likes of the Nationals and Phillies. Dodgers outfielders robbed at least three hits (and at least four bases). Taylor made sliding grabs to take singles away from Marte in the fourth and Brandon Nimmo in the sixth. Cody Bellinger made a running catch just in front of the wall in left-center on Eduardo Escobar’s deep drive in the fifth.
“They made some really good defensive plays,” Showalter said. “We had some line drives that they came in and caught or went back and caught. Maybe tomorrow they’ll fall.”
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.
