Mets’ offense dominated by Yu Darvish in series-opening loss to Padres
The large crowd was energized for the Mets’ first game after the All-Star break. Max Scherzer was on the mound and the team had just made a trade, acquiring designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach from the Pirates.
A big night seemed imminent. The one problem: The opposing pitcher.
The Mets never hit against Yu Darvish, and they had no chance in their latest encounter. The Padres right-hander was dominant, tossing seven innings of one-run ball to best Scherzer and send the Mets to their second straight loss, 4-1, in front of 36,855 at Citi Field.
“He was having quick innings there in the first part of the game and it was kind of a time of possession thing where I was grinding through the first few innings and he was very efficient,” Scherzer said after the Mets’ NL East lead over the Braves was trimmed to 1 ¹/₂ games. “That’s a tough situation to pitch in. Usually I like to be on the other side of that, forcing the other pitcher to grind.”
Darvish has now faced the Mets twice this year, and has allowed one run over 14 innings in a pair of easy victories. Across his 10-year major league career, the righty has never lost to the Mets and owns a 2.56 lifetime ERA against them in eight starts.
The futile offensive performance followed an anemic close to the first half of the season in which the Mets managed just eight runs over the last three games of a series with the woeful Cubs.
Eric Hosmer — who nearly came to the Mets in a spring-training trade — produced the game’s first two runs in the fourth inning, lacing a 2-1, 94-mph fastball over the wall in left-center field for his seventh home of the season. It was the slumping first baseman’s second extra-base hit of the month — the other came in his first at-bat — and his first homer since June 23.
“Big blow at that point,” Scherzer said.
Scherzer did well to limit the Padres to two runs over six innings. He pitched around a Pete Alonso error in the third, retiring the top three hitters in the San Diego lineup after the first two batters had reached base. Scherzer allowed five hits, walked one and struck out eight to move past Curt Schilling (3,116) and Bob Gibson (3,117) into 15th place on MLB’s all-time strikeouts list with 3,118.
“I’ll speak to Bob Gibson,” Scherzer said. “That was my dad’s favorite pitcher. I’m definitely going to give that ball to him. For me as a kid growing up, he was one of my Idol’s. I did book reports on him left and right.”
Pitching wasn’t the problem Friday night for the Mets. Darvish, and their unproductive bats, were. The Mets rarely squared him up. They expanded the zone and took strikes. He kept them off balance all night, much the way he did the first time he faced them this season.
“It was more of a night that the starting pitcher was on top of their game,” manager Buck Showalter said. “We couldn’t find our footing.”
The Padres put the game away in the seventh by scoring two runs off Joely Rodriguez, with some help from catcher Patrick Mazeika, who dropped a foul popup hit by Manny Machado.
The Mets avoided the shutout in the home half of the seventh when Luis Guillorme drilled a two-out double to the wall in right-center field to plate Jeff McNeil with their lone run of the night. But they didn’t mount a further threat over the final two innings.
“We scored one run,” Showalter said. “Tough to win.”
