Keep your eyes on the Mets’ mound staff.
It’s easy to overreact to an Opening Day loss, especially when the Mets haven’t yet earned the benefit of the doubt. They did not look good on Friday as their bats only mustered one hit against the Milwaukee Brewers in a 3-1 loss at Citi Field. After Starling Marte’s home run in the second inning, they went down 23 in a row, and Brandon Nimmo, Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, and Jeff McNeil went 0-for-13 combined.
Not even Jeff McNeil and Rhys Hoskins’s battle in the eighth inning after Hoskins’ spike to McNeil in a slide could have gotten the home team going on this windy day. Blame it on the winds. Blame it on emotion, pressure, or whatever you want. It just wasn’t meant to be.
But I don’t think Mets hitters will struggle all season long, especially when the weather heats up. The back of their baseball cards says so, along with logic … and pitching. Let’s put it this way: if the Mets’ pitching is as good as it showed on Friday, 90+ wins are possible.
This is what we got on the pitching side Friday ….
–Starter Jose Quintana was efficient, giving up two runs on six hits in 4 ⅔ innings, which I call a quality start. He is a guy the Mets can rely on to win games, and he needed to come through, especially with Kodai Senga out with a shoulder injury.
—Drew Smith came to relieve Quintana in the fifth inning. He kept this game at 2-1 after striking out Hoskins with runners on first and second and two outs. Smith seems to be a fine situational reliever if he continues pitching like he did on Friday.
—Jorge Lopez gave up a run, but he got groundouts to get a runner out and made a double play to end the inning. Lopez provides depth to that bullpen and has shown he can be reliable.
—Michael Tonkin pitched two scoreless innings with two strikeouts to show for it. He will be used often, and he has a good track record in the bullpen for getting outs in a big spot.
From his time with the Brewers, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns knows how to build a bullpen. That’s important because the Mets struggled last season with nothing special pitching outside of Kodai Senga and Justin Verlander.
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza hopes he doesn’t suffer the same fate as last year. That’s why Luis Severino’s start in the second game of the series on Saturday was meaningful, and Severino gave up 12 hits and 6 earned runs in five innings in the eventual 7-6 loss. But the silver lining was this: Diekman, Ramierez, Lopez, Ottavino, and Diaz gave up five hits and one earned run (combined) in three innings of relief.
No matter how Easter Sunday’s game turns out, the Mets dropped their home-opening series with the Brewers. The seemingly rejuvenated Tigers come to town on Monday for another three-game series. Six home games is a thimbleful in a 162-game. Still, we’ll at least learn more about the Mets’ mound staff. Stay tuned.
