For the second time in as many nights, the Mets found themselves in an early hole against the Cardinals and went on to lose. As had been the case in their loss in the series opener, the game never felt competitive, and it ended with St. Louis winning 9-2.
The fact that the Mets spared themselves the embarrassment of getting shut out in back-to-back games doesn’t really serve as consolation. The team is now 29-38 on the season, and the relative excitement about them taking two of three games from the Padres over the weekend has already been squashed.
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The Mets chose to go with an opener-plus-David Peterson approach in this one, and it didn’t go well. Austin Warren served as the opener, and he was somewhat fortunate to give up just two runs in his one inning of work. He gave up two hits, walked two, and only struck out one. The inning certainly could’ve gone worse.
Peterson fared even worse, as the Cardinals tattooed him for six runs in three-and-two-thirds innings. They got him for seven hits, and he walked two, struck out just one, threw a wild pitch, and gave up a pair of home runs.
It probably didn’t matter in the end, but the Mets had their best shot at making it a ballgame shortly after Peterson gave up his first two runs of the night, both of which scored in the top of the third. Trailing 4-0, the Mets had runners on first and second with two outs and Juan Soto at the plate. A home run would’ve made things interesting, but Cardinals starter Andre Pallante—who was pitching to get Soto out—wound up walking the bases loaded instead. And Jared Young, who represented the tying run as he came to the plate, grounded out softly to end the inning.
Peterson gave up his next three runs in the top of the fourth. Trailing 7-0 in the bottom of that inning, the Mets finally got on the board when Francisco Alvarez hit a two-run home run. Peterson gave up his sixth and final run of his brief outing in the top of the fifth, and the Mets’ bats went silent from there. Cardinals pitchers retired sixteen batters in a row, nearly finishing the game without allowing a single Mets baserunner up until a hit-by-pitch with two outs in the ninth broke that streak. The fact that they retired seventeen of the final eighteen Mets hitters they faced still served as a reminder that these Mets don’t do comebacks.
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If you’re looking for some relatively positive stuff to take out of the game, Cionel Perez threw one-and-one-third scoreless innings in relief of Peterson. And Jonathan Pintaro, who got called up earlier in the day, went three innings and gave up just one run in the top of the ninth. He has a 1.35 ERA in his limited major league time this year, and it’d be fun to see more of him if he weren’t seemingly destined to return to Syracuse as part of the Mets’ ongoing bullpen churn.
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