The Mets’ scheduled season opener last Thursday at Citi Field against the Milwaukee Brewers was rained out. So was Game 6 in Queens this past Tuesday versus the Detroit Tigers. In between, the Mets were winless in the four games they did play heading into yesterday’s date with the Tigers at home, which inclement weather was also threatening to postpone.
The Mets were projected by most pundits that closely follow Major League Baseball to finish in the lower half of the National League standings. Per FanGraphs, a baseball statistics and analysis website, the Mets had a 30.2% probability to make the playoffs. While it’s still just a small sample size of games they have played, early on the projections are seemingly accurate.
In the four defeats prior to yesterday, the Mets were outscored by a combined 19-8 by the Brewers and Tigers. First-year manager Carlos Mendoza faces many challenges guiding a ball club that is trying to build a roster—the charge of first-year general manager David Stearns—to be a sustainable postseason ball club while endeavoring to be competitive. They wasted an excellent team debut by lefty Sean Manaea on Monday, who they signed to a two-year, $28 million free-agent contract in January. The 32-year-old, eight year veteran went 7-6 with a 4.44 ERA in 117 2/3 innings for the San Francisco Giants last season.
He shut down the Tigers, going six innings and giving up just one hit with eight strikeouts. But the Mets’ bats were quiet and the Tigers plated five runs in the top of the 10th to drop the Mets to 0-4 for the first time since 2005.
“It’s one of those where it comes down to execution, because we are extremely prepared,” said Mets’ shortstop Francisco Lindor, who was 0-for-4 and one of five Mets who had at least three official at-bats without a hit. “We know what [our opponent] is going to do, what they are not going to do, how they are going to attack us,” Lindor said. “We have just got to execute.”
Mendoza pointed out that the Mets’ slow start hopefully isn’t emblematic of the next six months of the long 162-game schedule.
“At some point throughout the course of a year, you’re going to go through stretches like this,” he said. “It happened to be the first four games of the season.”
After closing out the home stand playing the Tigers this afternoon (1:10 p.m.) the Mets will have their next seven games on the road as they face the Cincinnati Reds for a three-game series opening tomorrow then will meet the Atlanta Braves for four games Monday through Thursday.