On the day the Mets lost Trevor May, their highest-paid setup man, to the injured list, their matinee with the Braves fell apart in the sixth inning.
The combination of starter Tylor Megill and relievers Adam Ottavino and Trevor Williams turned a scoreless tie into a seven-run deficit, each pitch seemingly burying the Mets deeper and deeper. At the end of the day, they lost 9-2.
Megill was cruising for the first four innings, not allowing a single hit to an Atlanta lineup that Buck Showalter called a “hornet’s nest.” The four hitless innings, combined with Megill’s five hitless frames to end his last start, gave him a sort of spiritual no-hitter.
That couldn’t keep the hornets from stinging, though.
In the fifth inning, Francisco Lindor committed a fielding error before Adam Duvall grounded the Braves’ first hit through the infield. Megill was able to escape that mess, but the sixth inning had other, devious plans for him.
If not for instant replay, we may be talking about a much different game. Austin Riley was initially ruled out on his single, but the almighty cameras in Manhattan found him to be safe. Instead of being the second out, Riley became the first of eight consecutive Atlanta hitters to reach base. The parade of hits included three straight singles (which loaded the bases and chased Megill), an RBI walk to Ottavino’s first assignment, and a backbreaking two-run double. Ottavino also threw in a wild pitch that scored a run.
Williams walked his first hitter as well, a recipe for disaster with Ronald Acuna waiting in the wings. Acuna unloaded on Williams’ first-pitch slider for a 104 mph line drive. The single plated the sixth run of Atlanta’s day, which also apparently had the added effect of making the Mets temporarily forget how to play baseball.
Matt Olson came up next and hit a grounder to Pete Alonso, who made a good play to come up with the ball and tag first. The problem was, Alonso forgot about the runner at third. By the time he checked on that runner, he was already scampering home. Resigned to getting the out at second, Alonso tried to get Acuna in a pickle. The Braves’ outfielder is far too clever to fall for those tricks, evading the Mets’ infield fairly easily.
At best, Alonso could have turned that ball into a double play with the runner getting thrown at home. The next best option would have been a 3-6 double play with Lindor supplying the tag on Acuna for the second out. Instead, it became a fittingly comedic punctuation mark for the Mets’ worst inning of the season.
It’s too lazy of a narrative to say that May’s injury caused this cavalcade to occur. But Ottavino did become the first Met reliever to pitch three days in a row, and it went about as poorly as it could have. While Ottavino was only charged for three of the earned runs in the sixth-inning debacle (three went to Megill, the last one was Williams’), the fact remained that the bullpen is in more dire straits than they were a day ago, and Ottavino did not record a single out.
Braves’ starter Ian Anderson was his typical, economical self. He got through 5.1 innings mostly unscathed, using just 84 pitches and allowing a single run. On a micro level, the Mets’ loss on Wednesday is nothing more than one of the many stinkers that each team will have throughout the course of a season. But losing a piece of the relief corps has a cascading effect that makes everyone’s lives a little harder.
The Mets’ starters remain at the top of the class, but now their peers in the bullpen threaten to bring the collective GPA down.
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