Palladino: Mets' Win Didn't Heal What Ails Them
By Ernie Palladino
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The Mets aren't dead yet, but that's only because it's too early in the season to make that sort of proclamation.
Let's just say that they head into Citi Field for Friday's game against the Reds on life support. Thanks to the growing mound mastery of Jacob deGrom, they avoided stretching a seven-game losing streak with a 2-0 win over the Brewers, who by the way sit just one win better than the Phillies, baseball's most putrid outfit this year.
If their first two losses against the Brewers tagged Terry Collins' group as a loser disguised as a second-place team, Thursday's win did little to dispel that. They still have major problems, but at least deGrom isn't one of them. In fact, if he keeps up what he's doing, he might just walk out of this season with a Cy Young Award to go with his NL Rookie of the Year award from last year.
As has been the case with others, pitching was not the problem. DeGrom was nothing short of brilliant, taking a one-hitter into the seventh where he allowed two hits. Even then, though, it looked for a moment that an "offensive explosion" of single runs in the sixth and seventh would not be enough to secure deGrom's eighth win.
Had the umpires not gone to a replay review of their call on Shane Peterson's two-out, ground-rule double that put men on second and third, deGrom's afternoon might have headed for ruination. Instead, seeing the ball had landed just foul, the umps reversed their call.
Peterson still reached, battling deGrom for nine pitches before blooping the 10th into center. But first and second looked a lot less harmful than second and third, especially when Darrell Ceciliani and Michael Cuddyer failed to talk in left center and nearly butchered Jean Segura's third-out popup.
No, the problem was not pitching. It rarely is with these Mets. It lie again with an offense that, this time, actually produced 10 hits, but failed in situations before Wilmer Flores doubled home Cuddyer in the sixth and Lucas Duda drove in deGrom with an infield single that pinballed off the pitcher.
Cuddyer getting thrown out at the plate to effectively kill a second-inning outburst didn't help. Nor did Duda looking at strike three with Curtis Granderson and Ruben Tejada on board in the third.
In all, the Mets went 3-or-9 with runners in scoring position.
Even Collins getting himself tossed in the fourth while arguing Scooter Gennett's tag on Ceciliani's steal attempt couldn't light a raging fire under his offensively inept squad.
When the runs finally did come, they arrived like quarreling couples -- separately and in different cabs. As Flores stood on third, the beneficiary of Segura's throwing error on his two-out double, Ceciliani failed to put the ball in play. Duda's RBI single loaded the bases, but Cuddyer, hitting .252 after a 1-for-3 outing during which he left three runners in scoring position, lined out to end the inning.
The Mets obviously cannot continue in this vein. The losing streak may have ended, but their troubles are far from over.
Then again, coming home at 1-7 looks a lot better mentally than 0-8, even if deGrom did need to make every pitch count over his margin-less eight innings of four-hit, no-walk, seven-strikeout ball. A sweep of the road trip could have had immediate, disastrous effects.
Instead, the Mets go into full tease mode now that they have returned to .500. A game or two up, a game or two down, until the inevitable spiral fans have grown so accustomed to seeing the past eight years happens again.
The losing streak ended Thursday in Milwaukee. But anyone who believes their troubles went with it had better check his watch.
It's getting to be about that time.
