He can still clear the fences, though. Starting in leftfield in his return from a strained right quadriceps, he went 0-for-3 with a walk. Howard drew even with the late Gil Hodges for 77th on Major League Baseball’s all-time list.
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With just one out standing between Jacob deGrom and his first career shutout Sunday, the Mets starter wanted to end it in style with a strikeout.
“Definitely fun and hopefully I have many more”, he said. Cincinnati starter Dan Straily and Milwaukee’s Zach Davies each pitched seven impressive innings. The Mets lost for the fourth time in five games.
“It was a good win, ” Phillies manager Pete Mackanin said. I’ve also written about the fact that if the Mets are going to win, or at this point even contend, they have to stop leaving men on base.
One night after going 1-for-8, the Mets went 0-for-7 Saturday – although they did manufacture their first two runs against Eickhoff.
“We’re not taking care of opportunities, ” manager Terry Collins said.
“It didn’t look like we took a lot of bad swings”, Rupp added.
NY failed to homer for just the second time in the last 14 games.
In the top of the 3rd, Curtis Granderson lined his 16th home run of the season out to right-center field to make it a 2-0 game. Then Eickhoff got a comebacker on which he had Travis D’Arnaud hung up off second base, but made a poor throw that allowed the runner to get back. “It really did”, Collins said. Franco blooped Robles’ first pitch, a 97 miles per hour fastball, into left field, and Bourjos came around to score. Maikel Franco had an RBI single for his second run driven in during the series and fifth in three outings. I went out there every inning like it was the first inning. Carlos Ruiz, who doubled to lead off the eight, scored the insurance run on Erik Goeddel’s wild pitch in the eighth. Jeanmar Gomez pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his 25th save in 27 chances.
The Mets tied it in the third on Reyes’ sacrifice fly that scored Juan Lagares.
NY took a 2-1 lead in the fourth on d’Arnaud’s sacrifice fly before the Phillies tied it in the fifth on Asche’s groundout that scored pitcher Jerad Eickhoff.
Eflin allowed three runs on five hits in six innings to take the loss. The right-hander singled and doubled to help his own cause.
“He’s ready to go”, Mackanin said. “Too many baserunners for my liking, but he got us into the seventh inning, so he did a good job that way”. This series brings together familiar faces with Phillies rookie OF Tyler Goeddel and his older brother Erik, a Mets reliever. He’s now gone at least 5 2/3 innings in each of his last six starts and has a 2.56 ERA over that span. He took Matt Harvey’s spot in the rotation this month when the former ace was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome. “Today I kept my pitch count down and I was fortunate enough to be able to go back out for the ninth”. We hit some balls hard that were right at guys.
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Darvish, a three-time All-Star, was making his fourth start since missing all of 2015 following Tommy John surgery. For the first time in his career, deGrom threw a complete game shutout, as he dominated the Phillies easily on Sunday.
