New York Mets left fielder Yoenis Cespedes, right, celebrates with Jose Reyes after the Mets defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 7-4 in a baseball game Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016, in St. Louis.
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The Cards go for the series win Thursday night behind Adam Wainwright, with a chance to move a season-best 10 games over.500 and pressure San Francisco for the first wild card spot and a home game. But every other Cardinal in the lineup including Martinez had at least two hits.
There was more injury misfortune, too, although the latest event seemed relatively benign by Mets standards.
Bruce dropped a bloop double into left field to lead off the second inning, and stayed on base for one more batter before walking off with Collins and trainer Ray Ramirez.
By Thursday, which followed one of the team’s most impressive wins of the season, Matheny couldn’t argue the team lacked ugly play. I’m shooting for [returning] tomorrow.
Whenever a baserunner goes from first base to third on a hit, there’s always the opportunity for something exciting to happen – like a bang-bang play. “We couldn’t afford to have him blow it out, so we took him out”.
“Definitely I don’t consider it serious at all”. I think that helps the quality of our at-bats as an offence because we’re kind of conserving energy, in a way.
Martinez allowed one run on three hits in seven innings against Houston his last time out.
“We had a lot of hits early but didn’t get a lot of runs until Stephen’s ball gave us some room”, said Mike Matheny following the game. To help with this, deGrom is coming off a poor start in his last start against the Giants in which he allowed 8 runs on 13 hits. “I don’t feel exhausted at all”. “It’s hard to get results when you throw everything right down the middle”. That’s what it is. “These are big-league hitters, and that’s what they do”. He allowed four hits, the only hits the Mets would see. It was the most allowed by the Mets since a 21-hit attack by the Philadelphia Phillies in a 16-1 rout on September 20, 2012.
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Lugo earned the start in place of Steven Matz (disabled list) after impressing in his first career start a week ago today, and produced another fine outing against a team competing for a playoff spot. Manager Terry Collins and a trainer popped out of the dugout before Asdrubal Cabrera’s at-bat and removed Bruce. Then, the manager noted, it’s not like the Mets have the extra arms to spare with Lugo and Robert Gsellman already pressed into the rotation. “I wouldn’t say I’m surprised [by the results], but it’s fun”. “My mind right now is on playing, and there’s nothing that’s making me get away from my contract”. These last two were frustrating, but I’ve got another one in five days. Cespedes kept going to third, and Adam Wainwright, who had to scramble to get to the bag because no one else was covering it, took the throw from Brandon Moss and tried to tag Cespedes on the foot.
