Mets' Sean Manaea, bullpen roughed up again as banged-up club loses game, series to woeful Nationals
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza takes the ball from starting pitcher Sean Manaea during the fifth inning against the Nationals on Thursday in Washington. Credit: AP/Nick Wass
WASHINGTON — The margin is as slim as it can be, and the Mets, beaten again by one of the worst teams in baseball, are teetering on the brink of the abyss.
Their 9-3 loss to the last-place Nationals on Thursday at Nationals Park showcased their imperfections in all their bleak horror.
The lineup was battered, the starter hit a wall, and that supposed shutdown bullpen again left the door ajar. And, as so often has been the case in a season in which they blew a 5 1⁄2-game lead in the NL East to now clinging to a half-game lead over the Reds for the final wild-card spot, there were more questions than answers.
“I really have no explanation,” Sean Manaea said about a troubling pattern in which he cruises for the first few innings before often unraveling in the fifth, as he did Thursday.
One thing, though, is certain.
“It ain’t late, but it ain’t early, either,” Juan Soto said.
“We don’t have much time left,” Carlos Mendoza said.
The exact number is 35 games — a little more than a month to wrap a tourniquet around this season. Not to mention they dropped two straight to the Nationals during what seems likely to be a season-defining stretch of 16 straight games.
Playing without Brandon Nimmo, who’s nursing a sore neck, without Luis Torrens, who’s nursing a sore hand, and mostly without Jeff McNeil, who’s nursing a sore shoulder, the rest of the lineup was subject to nursing a sore ego — stuttering against a Nationals pitching staff with the second-highest ERA in baseball.
After getting one hit against a Nationals bullpen with an MLB-worst 5.77 ERA Wednesday, they managed a lone single against five relievers in 4 2⁄3 innings Thursday.
“We’re losing games,” Soto said. “That’s all . . . We’ve got to go as a team, as a group and find out, one way or another, a way to win games.’’
The Nationals scored three runs off Manaea in the fifth (with an assist from trade deadline acquisition Tyler Rogers) in a game the Mets led 3-0. Rogers allowed another run in the sixth and Ryne Stanek was lit up for four runs in the eighth.
The start continued a troubling trend for Manaea, who, since returning from the injured list, has tended to dominate for the first few innings before hitting a wall in the fourth or fifth.
He allowed four runs and three hits with a walk and eight strikeouts in 4 2⁄3 innings. The lefty has yet to complete six innings in eight appearances this season.
“In the past three or four [outings], we’ve seen where he gets to the fifth inning and it’s either [he’s losing] the strike zone or they’re right on the fastball,” Mendoza said. “Last year, he got a lot of swings and misses on the [high fastball] and it seems like once he gets [into] that second time through, he’s having a hard time elevating the fastball.”
The Mets scored three runs off MacKenzie Gore in the first four innings on Francisco Lindor’s leadoff homer, Starling Marte’s third-inning solo shot and Hayden Senger’s sacrifice fly, the first RBI of his career.
The Nationals got one back in the fourth — a series of events that began when CJ Abrams led off the inning by striking out but reached first on a wild pitch. Manaea eventually loaded the bases and Abrams scored on Dylan Crews’ groundout.
Manaea wasn’t quite so lucky in the fifth, when he again loaded the bases with one out. Brady House singled, Jacob Young reached on a bunt and Abrams was hit by a pitch to bring up Paul DeJong, who brought the Nationals within one on a sacrifice fly to center. A walk to Andres Chaparro ended Manaea’s afternoon in favor of Rogers.
The submariner allowed a two-run single by Riley Adams to give the Nationals a 4-3 lead. Young added an RBI single in the sixth. Washington broke the game open by scoring four runs against Stanek in the eighth on House’s RBI single and James Wood’s three-run homer.
“I don’t think we’re clicking on all cylinders,” a disconsolate Manaea said. “I know everybody is doing everything they can, but we just haven’t put it all together at once.”
And now, in a scenario that seemed so unlikely just two months ago, the time is short and the odds are getting longer.
Notes & quotes: McNeil’s shoulder soreness kept him out of the starting lineup, but he was able to pinch hit in the eighth and played the last inning in left. The injury, which cropped up last week, doesn’t affect his swing but makes it uncomfortable to throw, Mendoza said . . . Nimmo, who exited in the second inning Wednesday with neck stiffness, didn’t improve overnight, Mendoza said. Nimmo collided with an outfield wall in 2019 and has had recurring stiffness ever since. He said it generally takes 24 to 48 hours for the pain to subside.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
