MILWAUKEE — Baseball’s first $375 million team returned to New York Wednesday night, where the Mets’ home opener scheduled for Thursday was postponed. It’s just as well the way they’re going.
Through a week’s worth of games, the money looks immaterial. The baseball season is a marathon, we’ve heard a million times, but the Mets are limping after the very first mile.
They didn’t lose a series for more than a month into the 2022 season, but got swept nearly as badly as is possible in series No. 2 of the season here in this pleasant Midwestern burg — a walk-off 7-6 loss on Wednesday followed two blowout defeats to a young and hungry team that resides in MLB’s smallest market.
“Obviously we have to play better,” Mets star Brandon Nimmo said. “They outplayed us in every facet. We just got flat out beat all three days.”
“They outhit us. They outpitched us. They outran us,” Mets star Francisco Lindor said. “They played better than us. So hats off to them.”
There was no way to sugarcoat it. As the Mets left for Mitchell Airport 10 minutes south of here following the walk-off home run by Brewers youngster Garrett Mitchell, they were licking their wounds — figurative and in a couple cases literal.
There were injury updates and non-updates, including a fairly vague tweet by the club saying Justin Verlander’s inflammation on his teres’ major (near his armpit) was down and he’d continue throwing, with no timetable for a return yet suggested.
Veteran reliever Tommy Hunter joined him on the injured list with back spasms. And starting catcher Omar Narvaez had to leave the finale late when calf tightness cropped up and was limping a bit later.
The one piece of good news on a generally disastrous stay was that top third-base prospect Brett Baty was said by the team to have no structural damage and only inflammation in his thumb, and was being viewed as day-to-day. Even though he’s in the minors, this injury is being followed closely by anyone with interest in the Mets since they appear to have a big third-base question a little more than three months after pulling out of a deal with superstar Carlos Correa. Eduardo Escobar sat Wednesday for the versatile Luis Guillorme.
Correa would have helped, but no one could have saved the Mets this series, one of the worst they’ve played in recent times. Nothing went right. None of their three starters — not Carlos Carrasco nor Max Scherzer nor Wednesday’s David Peterson — pitched the way they wanted as the Brewers kept hitting homers (nine in all).
“I believe in this team,” Lindor asserted. “I believe in every guy. I think we have what it takes. We have the “it’ factor. We have to continue to push and move forward. We have a great team. They outplayed us. Tomorrow we’ve got to come back and put on a better show than we have the past couple of days.”
Want to catch a game? The Mets schedule with links to buy tickets can be found here.
It wasn’t until an hour later they all learned there would be no game Thursday. The surprise rest might do them some good.
The Mets were actually lucky to have lugged a surprising 3-4 record back to Queens. It seemed much worse, thanks to a ledger that showed they were outscored 26-6 by the gritty Brewers, a nice team that hopes to contend in the NL Central and had to be heartened by this result. As for Mets fans, some may feel a bit sickened.
“We’re going home to see some friendly fans — we hope,” Showalter said before the rainout was announced. “We’ve been gone two months so I think everyone is looking forward to getting back and seeing some people. I think things will probably start settling down a bit.”
Showalter noted early in spring that the Mets were one of only three teams that was to begin with eight straight days of games (now seven, thanks to the Thursday’s rainout), but he’s making no excuses. The timing of the rainout might have cost them though, as Showalter only let likely closer (we say likely because he hasn’t named the closer) David Robertson pitch the eighth inning, then called upon Adam Ottavino for the ninth. He thought he needed pieces for Thursday, of course.
Meantime, the Brewers used their All-Star reliever Devin Williams to put up a scoreless ninth inning, and Showalter noted that with Milwaukee’s scheduled day off they could “empty their bullpen,” a luxury Showalter didn’t figure to have when a game was still scheduled for Thursday.
Anyway, as Ottavino admitted, he shook off replacement catcher Tomas’ Nido’s call for a fastball to throw a cutter. Which turned out to be a pitch that became a punctuation mark for the dreadful series when Mitchell sent into over the right-field wall.
Afterward the Mets headed to Mitchell Airport, which was actually named after General Mitchell, not Garrett Mitchell, but only served as a reminder of a trip here that was completely wasted.
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