Manager Buck Showalter admitted that the Mets didn’t pitch well and let a game “get away from us” on Saturday afternoon, two things that really didn’t need to be said after his team suffered the most lopsided home loss in team history.
The Mets received a far better pitching performance from Jose Quintana in the nightcap of a day-night doubleheader against the Braves following an embarrassing 21-3 blowout loss in the matinee portion.
But their bats remained silent, and they were swept in a disastrously long day at Citi Field with a 6-0 loss in Game 2.
“Today was definitely a tough day,” said Francisco Lindor, who went 0-for-4 in the nightcap after he sat out the opener with a sore right side. “When you lose it’s tough. When you lose two in one day, it’s tougher.
“The emotions are double.”
MLB strikeout leader Spencer Strider outdueled Quintana, who allowed one run over six innings in his best of five steady starts for the Mets since he came off the injured list on July 20.
Errors by second baseman Danny Mendick and center fielder Tim Locastro on the same play led to an Atlanta run in the eighth inning of Game 2.
Strider struck out six over seven scoreless innings to extend the dominance of the Braves’ starting pitchers in this series, which began with a 7-0 shutout on Friday night and included seven scoreless frames by former Mets farmhand Allan Winans in the first game Saturday.
Daniel Vogelbach’s eighth-inning home run in the opener represented the Mets’ only runs in a 34-3 wipeout aggregate score through the first three games of the series.
“We just didn’t score any runs other than late in the first game,” said Showalter, whose plummeting club has lost 10 of 12 since dealing away key players at the Aug. 1 trade deadline. “You’re basically talking about 18 innings of really being challenged offensively.”
In Game 1, the Mets (52-65) fielded a makeshift lineup that barely would have met requirements for a road game in spring training, much less an August clash against the team with the best record in baseball.
Winans, the Mets’ 2018 17th-round draft pick, was left unprotected and was then selected by the Braves in the 2021 Rule 5 draft.
He throttled an already trade-depleted lineup that was without two injured starters, Lindor and Brandon Nimmo, though both returned to action for Game 2.
The MLB-leading Braves (75-41) followed up their pounding of the Mets Friday by scoring five runs on eight hits against fill-in Game 1 starter Denyi Reyes during his 4 ²/₃ innings of work. Relievers Reed Garrett and Josh Walker, as well as Mendick, were rocked for 16 additional runs and six home runs over the final four innings, including two by MLB leader Matt Olson.
The Mets didn’t register a hit against Winans until Vogelbach’s single to left with one out in the fourth. By then, they trailed 5-0 after a two-run single in the top half of the fourth by Ozzie Albies.
Olson clubbed his MLB-leading 41st and 42nd homers of the season in the sixth and eighth innings, respectively.
Albies homered in the seventh to push the Mets’ deficit into double digits, and Sean Murphy homered in the eighth. That prompted Showalter to bring in Mendick, who yielded two more home runs, to Riley and Lopez, as he allowed eight runs in the ninth.
“We inflicted that on ourselves,” Showalter said between games. “It’s not their fault that we didn’t play very well, or pitch very well.”
Quintana’s work certainly marked an improvement in Game 2. The lefty allowed only one run, on an RBI single by former Met Kevin Pillar in the fifth of Quintana’s six innings.
Mendick booted a smash by Riley in the eighth, and Locastro overran the ball in center field, enabling Albies to score for a two-run lead. Ozuna ripped an RBI double against Drew Smith later in the inning for a 4-0 Braves advantage before Albies added a two-run homer in the ninth.
“After the trade deadline, our season has been similar to how it was prior to the trade deadline,” Lindor said. “You go up, you go down, you go back up. But the lows have been longer than the highs.
“We just gotta turn the page … and play better baseball for this coming month and a half that we have.”
