The Mets dropped into a three-way tie with San Francisco and St. Louis for the two NL wild cards.
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The Giants, Cardinals and Mets are all 81-70.
Watch out for the Miami Marlins, too.
Atlanta will aim for a second consecutive win over the Mets on Tuesday night, when the NL East rivals meet at Citi Field in the middle game of a three-game series.
Acquired from Arizona along with Swanson and Ender Inciarte in December’s trade that sent Shelby Miller to the Diamondbacks, Blair had been 0-6 with an 8.23 ERA in his first 12 big league starts, including 0-2 in three outings against the Mets.
Curtis Granderson and Jay Bruce’s miscommunication cost the Mets the lead in the sixth inning, when Braves slugger Matt Kemp popped a soft fly ball near the two outfielders, but neither went for the catch as both didn’t seem to lay claim to the ball. The Braves subsequently took a 2-1 lead after Josh Smoker issued a bases-loaded walk to Nick Markakis to force in a run. The move backfired as Garcia crushed a three run homer (14) to make it a 5-1 game.
“I definitely didn’t draw it up like this”, said Bruce, who is mired in an 0-for-13 slump that has dropped his average since joining the Mets to.176.
Yankees center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury (bruised right knee), third baseman Chase Headley (back spasms) and second baseman Starlin Castro (strained right hamstring) were all out of the lineup for the second straight game.
“We feel great”, Granderson said.
The Mets tried to rally in the eighth inning after Teheran’s departure. And Bruce, rightfully, has been the focal point of the fans’ frustration. With the left handed hitting Bruce due up, Collins made a potentially controversial choice, pinch hitting for the struggling Bruce with right handed hitting Eric Campbell. A similar two-day break created to clear his head had seemed to jump-start Neil Walker back in July. In his last start against the Twins, Colon put up a win with seven innings, three hits and no earned.
Bruce admitted the move to NY has been hard.
How far has Bruce sunk?
Freeman grounded out on the first pitch he saw in the first inning but homered in the third and laced a two-run double in the fourth before singling and scoring in the seventh and singling in the eighth.
Terry Collins on pinch-hitting for Bruce: “It’s one of the worst things you can do as a manager is to pinch-hit for a star”.
“We go out to win the game, you know what I mean?” “I know I talked to him about it”.
“That’s one of my jobs is to drive in runs, but I’m just happy we got the win tonight”, Kemp said after the game. “But that’s not a fun situation”. “I think everyone in this locker room does”. I think everyone in this locker room does. “I don’t deserve any explanation from the manager”. “It is what it is”. The rope may be getting short.
“24+ hours of active labor, epidural at 8-9cm dilated and 3 hours of intense pushing in every position possible and this little guy wouldn’t flip (he was sunny side up) or budge past my pelvic bones”, his wife, the model known as Chelsea Goff before their wedding, wrote on Instagram.
Yoenis Cespedes, who carried the Mets at this point last season, has considerably cooled as well. Rivera hit a sac fly that scored Cespedes. He had a game-ending strikeout with the tying run on first base. “He’s probably frustrated, he’s probably upset”, Collins said after Tuesday’s game.
I agree with Neal Huntington’s sentiment that these last few weeks of the season are important, but I’m quite sure we have different ideas about what it needs to look like for it to be a success.
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While Bruce admitted it was hard to be pinch hit for in that situation, he said he understood Collins’ decision. So we’ve got to get it done. “It was kind of a he-thought, I-thought kind of deal”.
