The promised better times ahead, but Friday night at Citi Field, the second-half Mets looked a lot like the first-half Mets.
The Los Angeles took the first game of a three-game series with a 6-0 win. Justin Verlander went only five innings. Five pitchers combined to walk nine hitters and the Mets’ bats went quiet against left-hander Julio Urias.
The Mets were a combined 1-for-27 with a walk.
With the All-Star break now in the rearview mirror, time is running out. The Aug. 1 .
“This was not a good game of baseball in any facet,” Verlander said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t go on a roll. We played good baseball going into the break and I’ll be damned if one game is going to be the thing that says, ‘You sure can’t go on a run.’ That’s not it. We need to get back to that good baseball.”
Verlander, coming off of a shaky performance , gave up three in the fifth before the Dodgers (52-38) took three runs off of three relievers.
Verlander walked the bases loaded with one out in the fifth. Mookie Bets then lined one right to Canha in left field. The outfielder slid to make the catch and the ball bounced off his glove.
Freddie Freeman, who dueled Jeff McNeil for the NL batting title right down to his last at-bat last season, then doubled to score two and put Los Angeles up 3-0.
Verlander said he “lost feel” for his pitches. He’s unsure of why or how.
“If I had the answer to that right away then I would have fixed that right away,” he said. “It happens from time to time. When you do lose a little bit of feel, you try to rein it in as quickly as possible. It’s happened to me many times in my career but this one took a little longer than I would have liked. I was just trying to limit the damage after that.”
That inning was a microcosm of the Mets’ 2023 season. A struggling ace failing to get the big out, a defensive miscue and a reminder of better times when Mets hitters could do no wrong.
Verlander took his fifth loss of the season (3-5), allowing three earned runs on only two hits and striking out six. He walked six, which forced him to throw 104 pitches over only five innings. It was the most walks allowed for the ace since April 21, 2017, and it tied the second-most allowed in his career. He hasn’t walked seven since 2006.
“Inexcusable,” he said. “I can’t walk six guys and expect to win a ballgame or even give your team a chance.”
Peterson,, gave up one in the sixth. J.D. Martinez hit his 23rd home run of the season in the eighth. Drew Smith gave up one in the ninth before getting out of a bases-loaded jam. Trevor Gott was the only reliever to record a clean inning.
Urias blanked the Mets (42-48) through six innings. Brandon Nimmo was the only hitter to actually get a hit off him, and it came in the first inning. The Mets’ leadoff man took a 1-2 slurve and hit it off the top of the right-center field fence. It was initially ruled a home run, but after an umpire review, it was changed to a ground-rule double. The ball had failed to clear the fence and it bounced back toward the field, into the glove of right fielder Jason Heyward. Pete Alonso walked with two outs to put two on, but Urias retired Starling Marte to end the threat.
“Nimmo got us going,” said shortstop Francisco Lindor. “I didn’t execute to get him over.”
Urias (7-5) struck out six in one of his best performances of the season.
“He didn’t get into many patterns and [catcher Will Smith] does a great job,” said manager Buck Showalter. “There are not many secrets about anybody here. Everybody can be pitched to if you get it in the right sequence and the sequence seemed to always be in his favor. There was nothing you could really box out. He threw all of them where he wanted to throw them tonight.
“Still, it doesn’t sting any less because even at 3-0 we thought we’d make a run at some point.”
A run is still possible, but it has to start soon.
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