Atlanta catches Mets atop NL East
The Mets' Starling Marte is checked by a trainer with manager Buck Showalter looking on, after being hit on the hand by a pitch from the Pirates' Mitch Keller during the first inning of a game in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. Credit: AP/Gene J. Puskar
PITTSBURGH — The Mets have started playing poorly at a particularly unfortunate time.
With an 8-2 loss to the Pirates on Tuesday, they have dropped three in a row — all against last-place teams — to match their longest losing streak of the season. With Atlanta winning its late game in Oakland, the Mets fell into a tie atop the NL East, their lead that peaked at 10 1/2 games in early June completely erased.
“We’re still in good spirits,” Taijuan Walker said. “Teams go through these stretches. Obviously, we don’t want to, but it’s a part of the game. We know what we have to do. We’re a good team; we’ve been a good team all year. So we’ll snap out of this funk and when we do we’ll get on a little roll and keep playing good baseball.”
This time, again, nothing went well for the Mets, including that which is under their control (listless hitting, ineffective pitching) and that which isn’t (potential injuries).
Starling Marte exited in the bottom of the second after getting hit on the right middle finger — by a 96-mph fastball from righthander Mitch Keller — in the top of the first. He was in obvious pain upon getting plunked but remained in the game, temporarily, after manager Buck Showalter and an athletic trainer checked on him.
Marte, his finger swollen and unable to grip a baseball, had medical imaging done but he and Showalter said the Mets (85-51) didn’t have the results yet.
“It was painful,” Marte said through an interpreter. “I’m hoping that there’s not a fracture there, so wait and see and hopefully I can recover quickly.”
Showalter said: “That one stung him pretty good . . . So far, so good. We might’ve gotten lucky. We’ll see.”
Facing the lowest-scoring offense in the National League, Walker gave up four runs in five innings, a continuation of his recent issues. His ERA since the All-Star break is up to 6.25. Before that, he had a 2.55 mark.
As drastic as that is, those figures mirror Walker’s 2021: 2.66 ERA in the first half, 7.13 ERA in the second half.
Walker gave up three runs in the first three innings — two on Rodolfo Castro’s homer off the rightfield foul pole — then had to deal with a blister that emerged on his right index finger, which is where his signature splitter leaves his hand, he said.
Pittsburgh (50-84) added another run in the fifth when its top-of-the-order duo of Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds doubled and singled, respectively.
Showalter pulled Walker, who said he expects to be fine for his next start, at 80 pitches.
“As the game wore on, it really kept him from finishing his pitches,” Showalter said of the blister. “It was pretty ugly. I checked him after the fifth inning and decided not to run him back out there so that hopefully it doesn’t turn into something worse.”
Keller, meanwhile, navigated lots of basepaths busyness — five hits, two walks and the hit batsman in Marte — to survive six scoreless innings and lower his ERA to 4.22. It was the first time that that Keller, a regular member of the Pirates rotation, made it through an outing without allowing a run in one year and four days.
Pete Alonso, mired in a 2-for-25 funk over his past seven games, twice grounded into inning-ending double plays. He stranded four of the Mets’ eight runners.
Over the past half-month, the Mets have averaged 2.92 runs per game.
“It catches your attention because they’ve been so good for so long,” Showalter said. “Guys are frustrated right now because they know they’re capable of better.”
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.
