Mets pitching fails them again on West Coast as NL East lead shrinks

Carlos Carrasco allows five runs in 4.2 innings pitched. Plus, how the Mets will head back home after Sunday night to a completely different NL East.

(Photo courtesy of Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)

What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️

• The Mets pitching staff got pounded once again as they lost 11-6 to the Angels (box)

• Angels 1B Jared Walsh hit for the cycle, going 4-for-5 with three RBI and Mike Trout hit a pair of homers in LA’s victory

• RHP Carlos Carrasco struggled, allowing five earned runs and four home runs in 4.2 innings pitched

• Things didn’t go much better for the bullpen as RHP Jake Reed and LHP Chasen Shreve allowed a combined six earned runs in 2.2 innings pitched

• OF Khalil Lee hit his first major league home run in the 9th inning, driving in three runs

• 1B Pete Alonso clubbed his first longball since returning from his hand contusion, his 17th of the season

• Starling Marte (quad tightness) will return to the Mets starting lineup tonight, per manager Buck Showalter

• After last night’s loss, the Mets are now 4-5 on their West Coast road trip

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Roster Moves 📰

• RHP Colin Holderman placed on 15-day injured list

• RHP Jake Reed recalled from Triple-A Syracuse

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Who’s Hot 🔥

• 3B/DH JD Davis is hitting .356/.412/.444 with four doubles and five RBI with four multi-hit games since May 23rd

• Following his multi-hit performance last night, INF Luis Guillorme is now hitting .381/.466/.413 with two doubles, four RBI, 13 runs scored and an .879 OPS over his last 21 games played

• After going eight straight games without an RBI, OF Mark Canha has now driven in four runs over his last two games in Anaheim. Canha is now batting .301 on the season

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Today’s Game 🗓

Match-up: Mets (39-22) at Angels (28-32)

Where: Angel Stadium — Anaheim, CA

Starters: RHP Taijuan Walker (3-2, 3.28 ERA) vs LHP Patrick Sandoval (3-1, 2.81 ERA)

When: 7:08 PM EST

Where to Watch: ESPN

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The Mets are headed home to a new NL East 📝

(Photo courtesy of Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)

You know that feeling you got the first time you visited home after going away for college and thinking to yourself, “things are not the same as I left it?” For the Mets, that will be an all-too-familiar feeling as they head back home after their time away on the West Coast later tonight.

When New York left Citi Field on June 1st, they had a 10.5 game lead in the National League East over the Atlanta Braves. Following last night’s loss, they have now seen that lead shrink in half to 5.5, and it could be even lower by the next time they play at Citi Field on Tuesday depending on the outcome of Sunday’s contests.

While it hasn’t been a great road trip for the Mets (4-5 record with one more game to play), it isn’t as if the club is in a free fall. We all knew this trip would be a difficult one for them based on the travel, length, level of opponents and injuries to the club, and a .500 record was most likely the goal when this all started. What no one could have anticipated, however, was the fact that the Braves and Phillies would combine to go 19-0 in their last 19 games, slicing into the Mets divisional lead significantly in the process.

Now we can dissect the fact that the Braves are in the midst of playing 17 consecutive games against teams with losing records who are a combined 60-plus games under the .500 mark — they still have seven more games in that stretch, by the way — or that the Phillies are similarly enjoying a soft part of their own schedule following the firing of manager Joe Girardi, but wins are wins and seeing two teams rip off 19 straight simultaneously is impressive and quite frankly pretty jarring. For the Mets, though, it still appears as if it’s business as usual.

“I haven’t looked at the standings since we left New York,” manager Buck Showalter said after Saturday night’s loss. “All that stuff, there’s nothing we can do about it, right? When you look at how good those teams are, it’s kind of obvious at some point, they’re going to get going.”

“We just take care of how we’re playing here,” Carlos Carrasco told reporters. “We don’t try to think about those games. We’re just going to continue to play hard, and that’s it.”

While I’m certain that this no worries, confident, take it day-by-day attitude could give Mets fans some flashbacks to last year’s club not being worried about their level of play, either, things do feel pretty different this time around. You’ve got a manager and several veteran players that were not on this roster this time last year who have been through the wars before and know how to handle adversity. The Mets were never going to run away with this division for a full season and things were bound to get tighter at some point, even if it did take an act-of-God-level 19-0 stretch from the Braves and Phillies to make things interesting.

And if me telling that you things are different doesn’t reassure you in the way you need, let this: The Mets have currently had the 4th toughest schedule in all of baseball. The Braves, conversely, have had the 19th toughest. Atlanta has also made their run during the easiest part of their schedule at the same time the Mets were facing the biggest gauntlet in theirs. And while I’m not telling you things won’t get a little hairy every now and then or that I’m even guaranteeing anything (I won’t make that mistake again), I don’t think now is the time to panic. Adversity comes for everyone over the course of a baseball season, and the Mets are staring theirs down in the face right now.

“The sky isn’t falling,” Showalter said. “It’s only raining.”

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Down on the Farm 🌾

• Johneshwy Fargas (OF, Triple-A): 2-for-5, 2B, 3 RBI

• Francisco Álvarez (C, No. 1 prospect, Double-A) 1-for-4, 2B, RBI, run scored

• Christian Scott (RHP, No. 25 prospect, Single-A): 5 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 6 K (win)

Box Scores: Triple-A | Double-A | High-A | Single-A

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Around the League 🚩

• The Braves won their 10th straight game on Saturday, thanks to an eight-run 7th inning vs the Pirates

• The Phillies won their ninth straight game by a score of 4-0 over the D-backs after a scoreless start from RHP Zack Wheeler

• The Brewers losing streak reached eight as they lost to the Nationals 8-6

• Yankees OFs Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton combined to hit three home runs in the club’s 8-0 drubbing of the Cubs

• White Sox fans directed “Fire Tony” chants at manager La Russa in the team’s 11-9 extra inning loss to the Rangers

• The Giants survived a late-innings Dodgers surge to edge out a 3-2 victory