Blunders, early hook of Taijuan Walker key Mets' loss to Giants

Baseball, by definition and intention, is a grind. It’s a season of 162 games — more if you’re lucky — with high highs and low lows. But even throughout all those pitches and innings and wins and losses, there are days that stick out on the calendar. Days that say, "The season was decided here."

And though it’s too early to say that Wednesday was such a game for the Mets, there’s no doubt it felt pivotal. It was apparent when the Mets couldn’t capitalize on the Giants’ blunders, too busy making massive blunders of their own.

It was even clearer after Luis Rojas made the ill-fated decision to lift Taijuan Walker in the seventh inning in their 3-2 loss to the Giants at Citi Field.

Walker was cruising when he was replaced by Aaron Loup, one of the Mets’ best relievers and the lefty-lefty matchup for Brandon Crawford.

But after Loup's first pitch became a two-run double, the Mets’ one-run lead turned into a one-run deficit, and portions of the restless crowd began to chant their displeasure. It sounded like "Fire Rojas!"

The loss dropped the Mets (61-65) to four games under .500. Along the way, they made baserunning mistakes and fielding errors — official and not — and squandered Walker’s performance. They hit into five double plays, two of them preventable. With Atlanta off Wednesday, the Mets fell to seven games back in the NL East.

"Finishing the last days of August [and] having a tough loss like this, now we’re going a little bit further away in the standings," Rojas said. "Our guys are frustrated. They know we could have had this game . . . It’s a tough one."

It was perhaps made more brutal by how it ended.

After Brandon Belt dropped his foul pop-up, Jonathan Villar singled with one out in the ninth to put the tying run on base against Jake McGee, and Brandon Drury reached when Giants outfielders Austin Slater and Alex Dickerson collided on his fly ball. Brandon Nimmo walked to load the bases with two outs but Pete Alonso popped out to end it.

Along the way, the Mets made almost too many mistakes to count, starting in the second inning, which actually kicked off with back-to-back singles by Javier Baez and Dominic Smith. Villar hit a liner that looked as if it would drop but stayed up long enough to get snagged by Mike Yastrzemski in center. Baez took off for home from second and was doubled up to quash the rally.

The Giants took a 1-0 lead in the fourth when Kris Bryant capitalized on Walker’s only real mistake, a 96-mph fastball that ended up in the second deck.

The Mets scored their first run of the series in the fifth on a two-out throwing error by Bryant on a routine grounder to third. The Mets took the lead in the sixth on Smith’s run-scoring double.

Things finally disintegrated in the seventh. Villar booted a ball at third and Dickerson hit a blooper to shallow right-center that was missed by a retreating Jeff McNeil and an advancing Michael Conforto for a single.

With none out and two on, Rojas replaced an incredulous Walker with Loup, who promptly allowed Crawford's two-run double into the rightfield corner. In 69 previous plate appearances against Loup this season, lefthanded batters were 10-for-63 (.159) with zero extra-base hits.

Walker, who had thrown only 74 pitches, threw a water bottle in disgust while chants of "Fire Rojas" could be heard. Walker allowed three runs, two earned, and two hits in six innings-plus with a walk and three strikeouts.

Rojas said it was simply a logistical move: It was a lefty/lefty matchup, Crawford is the best hitter on the team, and he already had seen Walker twice.

"It didn’t work," he said.

Added Walker: "Obviously, I want to stay in my game, but it’s not my call to make and I show emotions. It is what it is."

Absolutely. But "what it is" is starting to look uglier by the day.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.