The Mets were knotted in another close one with the Yankees.
After David Peterson worked his way through six efficient innings, Huascar Brazoban entered and somehow danced his way out of a bases loaded jam in the bottom of the seventh to keep things evened at two a piece.
Ryne Stanek was handed the bottom of the eighth — and things didn’t go as planned.
The right-hander found himself in immediate danger as he issued a leadoff walk to Jasson Dominguez and then Austin Wells lined a one out double down the right-field line to put two in scoring position.
Jorbit Vivas worked an 11-pitch at-bat before rolling one down to Pete Alonso. The big first baseman fielded the ball cleanly, but with the speedy Dominguez running on contact he uncorked a throw extremely wide of home, allowing the go-ahead run to score easily.
After a pitching change, the Bombers were sure to make the Mets pay, as they tacked on five more runs with a Paul Goldschmidt single and Cody Bellingerthree-run homer to put this one away for good.
“I messed it up,” Alonso said. “I had the identical play (Saturday) where it was hit straight to me and it was a tag play at home, and I just made an awful throw. That whole inning, this game, it’s on me — after that throw the momentum got out of hand.
“It stinks because it’s the same play and I feel like that’s a play that I usually make and I can make pretty routinely, but I just had my feet set and didn’t get my fingers around the baseball and it sailed on me — bad throw on me, this one is 100 percent on me.”
Alonso’s throw certainly was the biggest miscue of the game — but he wasn’t alone in what was another poor defensive showing from the Mets.
Mark Vientos bobbled what should’ve been a routine groundball leading off the bottom of the first, allowing Goldschmidt to reach base safely — and he scored just a few batters later on a Bellinger two-run single off of Alonso’s glove.
And this is just the latest sloppy effort in what’s quickly developing into an early season problem for New York — Carlos Mendoza says it has to change.
“We’ve been through some stretches where it’s been sharp,” the skipper said. “But also there’s been games where we’re not finishing plays or completing them, even some of the routine plays — as we saw in the first inning tonight which led to a run.
“This is something that we have to get better at and we will because we have good defenders.”
Read the full article here