Clay Holmes struggles, Mets' bats quiet again in third straight loss to Padres
The Mets' Ronny Mauricio strikes out swinging in the second inning of a game against the San Diego Padres on Wednesday in San Diego. Credit: AP/Derrick Tuskan
SAN DIEGO – On the eve of Thursday’s trade deadline, manager Carlos Mendoza shared his message to players checking and re-checking social media to see if they were destined for parts elsewhere: Don’t.
“We’ve got a job to do today,” he said prior to Wednesday’s 5-0 loss to the Padres at Petco Park, a sweep-clinching defeat. “Just try to block [out] as much as possible.”
The actual game made that kind of difficult.
First, there was homegrown reliever Jose Butto hugging his bullpen mates in the early innings and then moving to the dugout to do the same – having learned he, along with prospects Blade Tidwell and Drew Gilbert, was headed to the Giants as part of a package for submarining righthander Tyler Rogers.
And then there was the play on the field: As has been the case with every starter not named David Peterson, the rotation again proved its inability to pitch late into games. This time, the culprit was Clay Holmes, whose contact-driven approach has periodically gotten him into trouble. Wednesday, it not only did that – he allowed four runs, two earned, and eight hits with two walks and three strikeouts – but it also inflated his pitch count. He was pulled after 3 2/3, having already thrown 79 pitches.
The already taxed bullpen pitched 22 2/3 innings of this six-game West Coast road trip.
As for the offense, it was, for the second straight game, all but non-existent. The Mets recorded just three hits as Yu Darvish allowed two hits with no walks and seven strikeouts in seven innings. To make matters worse, Francisco Alvarez was nailed by a foul ball off the side of the mask in the fifth; he managed to finish the inning, but was lifted for Luis Torrens in the sixth. Alvarez passed concussion protocol.
“Tomorrow, we’re going to check again to see how I feel but as of right now, I feel good,” Alvarez said through an interpreter. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to go out there Friday.”
The Padres opened the scoring on Manny Machado’s bases=loaded, two-run single in the second and they pounced again in the third.
After recording the first two outs, Holmes was on his way to his first clean inning when Jose Iglesias hit a routine grounder to short. Francisco Lindor, though, didn’t put enough on the throw, sailing it short to Pete Alonso and taking him off the bag. That was enough for Gavin Sheets, who blasted Holmes’ 0-and-2 sweeper 427 feet to left- center to put the Padres up 4-0.
Jackson Merrill’s eighth-inning sacrifice fly made it 5-0.
After, Holmes said there have been no talks of moving him back to the bullpen; he’s already far surpassed his innings limits after being converted from relief.
“I wasn’t able to make a pitch when I needed to with runners on, they were able to put some pressure on,” he said. “Physically, I feel good...Obviously, I’m not pitching to what I’m capable of, I feel like, but the stuff I feel like is there.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
