Mets Game 82: Loss to Yankees

Yankees 5 Mets 1

One game beyond the season’s halfway point and the Mets are back to .500.

Mets Game Notes

Tough one for Jonathon Niese, who after struggling in the first frame, settled down to set down the Yankees through the next five innings. He had his fabulous 12-6 curveball working brilliantly with good bite.

Jose Reyes had another multiple-hit game. This is truly unreal.

However, Reyes made a key mistake in the bottom of the seventh. With none out and Reyes on first base, Justin Turner hit a long fly to center which was caught, and Reyes tagged to take second base. On the relay in, Yankee shortstop Eduardo Nunez dropped the ball and was slow in going after it. Reyes took off immediately for third and was thrown out. On the replay, it looked like Alex Rodriguez may have missed the tag. But, it was pretty close, and the ball certainly beat Reyes to the bag, so he was called out. Even if it was the wrong call by the ump, it was a very risky decision by Reyes, who in my opinion was trying to do too much. That’s the kind of risk you take when your team is ahead, not behind. Even if Reyes made it safely and eventually scored, the Mets would still have been down by a run, so it didn’t make sense from that perspective, either. Not to mention Carlos Beltran was coming up to hit — the same Beltran who drove in 26 runs in June.

After the game on SNY, Bob Ojeda said he was OK with Reyes’ decision because that is the Mets game: to be overly aggressive and put pressure on the opposing defense. In the postgame press conference, manager Terry Collins also supported Reyes’ aggressiveness for basically the same reason — and “because it is Jose”. I still disagree, and wonder if Ojeda and Collins would have supported this knuckleheaded decision if Reyes were hitting .275 instead of .350.

Reyes and Turner combined for half of the Mets’ ten hits.

If nothing else, we discovered that Nick Swisher cannot catch up to 98 – 100 MPH fastballs. Note that in the scouting report. Though Bobby Parnell allowed an RBI single to stretch the Yankee lead to 4-1, he was bringing the heat.

We also found out that A-Rod likes to chase fastballs above the letters. Keep ’em coming. Though, I wouldn’t recommend throwing it up there at 87 MPH as D.J. Carrasco did against him in the ninth; make sure the velocity is 92+.

Carrasco was charged with a wild pitch in the ninth, but it really should’ve been called a passed ball on Josh Thole, who stabbed with a backhand kind of motion at a slider that breaking down, missed it, and it went through his legs. In that situation Thole should have turned the glove so that the fingers were pointing down toward the ground, moved the glove to the dirt, and positioned his body behind his hands, knees dropping to the ground and the hands “plugging the hole” between his knees. As it was the wild pitch did not result in a run scoring, but still — it’s the process, not necessarily the result.

I wonder if Ivan Nova has a brother named Aldo? I know, I know — it’s pure fantasy.

The Mets were 2-for-10 with RiSP and left 11 men on base. But, the Yankees were 4-for-19 with RISP and also had 11 LOB. So there wasn’t much difference in terms of efficiency — the Yankees simply put more people on base.

Next Mets Game

The Mets and Yankees do it again at 4:10 PM on Saturday afternoon. Dillon Gee goes to the mound against Bartolo Colon.