Mets Game 136: Loss To Phillies

Phillies 7 Mets 2

The 90-win goal is officially an impossibility. Unless, of course, Sandy Alderson was counting spring training games.

Mets Game Notes

Bartolo Colon pitched well, until he didn’t. He shut out the Phils through the phirst phour phrames, then allowed a solo homer to Marlon Byrd. Then, the walls came down in the sixth as Philadelphia chased Colon to the showers (after a brief pit stop at the Viennese dessert table) and scored five runs.

Meanwhile, Jerome Williams shut out the Mets through six, didn’t run out of gas until the seventh, and allowed only two runs (both crossed home with reliever Justin De Fratus on the mound).

Speaking of, De Fratus has a pretty nice stat line for the season, but it seems like every time he faces the Mets, he gives up at least one run. Going into this game, he had a 2.45 ERA against the Mets, but he also gave up 7 hits, 1 walk, and 4 runs (2 earned) in 7 innings. I don’t know how/where to look it up as a split vs. opponent, but I’d be curious to see how many inherited Mets runners he’s allowed to score. Against all teams, going into this ballgame, he’d allowed 8 of 22 inherited runners to score — that’s not so good. If my calculations are correct, his stat is now 10 inherited runners scored out of 25, which means 40% of the runners he inherits wind up scoring. That’s awful. I think the average reliever allows less than 30%.

Congrats to Dilson Herrera, who collected his first hit as a big leaguer in the bottom of the seventh — a single.

Speaking of that seventh inning, when it began, the Phillies had already collected 11 hits, while the Mets had one (1). The Mets finished with a flourish, though, bloating that total to a robust 5 by the end of the ballgame.

So glad that Keith Hernandez mistakenly referred to Ben Revere as “Denard Span” because I also have had those two guys confused for years.

During the telecast, Steve Gelbs did a spot on Travis d’Arnaud‘s struggles with receiving pitches — in particular, his trouble with passed balls, and how they were related to his “framing” technique. Did anyone notice that another Mets blog covered exactly this topic a few days ago? And, did anyone remember that we discussed exactly this topic during the Game 112 recap? Hmm … is this a complete coincidence? Or is it possible that people preparing talking points for TV are paying attention to blogs? And if so, where does that place MetsToday in the Human Centipede of the blogosphere?

After Gelbs, Keith, and Gary Cohen basically crapped all over d’Arnaud, criticizing the young catcher’s stand and balance, framing, passed balls, inability to block pitches in the dirt, and awful throwing, Keith concluded by saying, “despite it all, I really like the way Travis has done behind the plate.” Oh boy. Keith was referring to the only other aspect of catching that exists — calling a game. Hey, as a catcher, I appreciate pitch-calling, and do believe it is very important, but, a catcher has to do all the other things as well.

For the record, I like Travis d’Arnaud, and believe he can improve. I just found it funny that a) the SNY booth has done a 180 in their opinion of his receiving skills; and b) that they could completely denigrate the kid for five minutes, and then hear Keith say that he otherwise was happy with d’Arnaud’s performance. Maybe I have a strange sense of humor.

Next Mets Game

In the battle of the basement, it’s a one-one tie. Who will win the war? Tune in on Sunday at 1:10 PM to find out. Dillon Gee takes the hill against a suddenly resurgent A.J. Burnett.