The game started out well for the Mets, as after Corey Oswalt hurled a scoreless top of the first, Amed Rosario gave the Mets the early lead in the bottom of the frame, singling home Jeff McNeil with an opposite field hit. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of the ballgame for the New York offense.

Oswalt did his part to keep the game on track in the final start of his rookie campaign, keeping the Fish off the board for the first three, but he ran into a patch of difficulty in the fourth. After allowing a pair of singles and a walk to load the bases with one out, Oswalt got the ground ball he needed from Magneuris Sierra, but unfortunately the speedy Marlins right fielder beat the return throw to first to allow the tying run to score. It became clear following that inning that Oswalt was done, and that was when the only real drama of the night unfolded.

It was already known Wright would be the first man off the bench tonight, and with Oswalt due up fifth in the bottom of the fourth inning, the stage was set. The Marlins however, delayed the moment, retiring No. 8 hitter Kevin Plawecki to end the frame and leave the captain in the on deck circle. Temporarily.

Paul Sewald entered for the Mets in the fifth and was unimpressive, surrendering two runs on three hits to the middle of Miami’s lineup, but all the crowd really cared about was the next half inning. Wright emerged from the dugout to a chorus of cheers, and the longtime face of the Mets’ franchise looked visibly nervous as he dug in. His at-bat was short lived, when he hit the first pitch he saw from José Ureña directly on the ground to third, but making an out was far from enough to wipe the smile off No. 5’s face.

After that, the rest of the night went downhill fast for the home team. Drew Gagnon entered for New York in the sixth, and while he only allowed one earned run in what  ultimately amounted to 1.2 innings of work, thanks to errors from Todd Frazier and Rosario, the Marlins were able to push five runs across against him, establishing an 8-1 lead that would be the eventual final score.

Tim Peterson pitched very well in the eighth and ninth innings to maybe provide a slimmer of a silver lining at the end, but it’s clear that everyone associated with this team began looking forward to tonight’s contest the minute Wright’s at-bat tonight concluded.

This evening, left hander Steven Matz will make his final start of 2018, but more importantly, Wright will take third base for the final start of his memorable Major League career, and it will be fascinating to see what kind of final moment he can give us.

Photo credit: Wendell Cruz – USA Today Sports

This was a very listless September game. For losing teams, games in the month of September have a knack for being, um, not exactly must-see television. And look, it’s probably my job to spice up bad games and find narratives to talk about somewhere. It’s probably poor form for me to just tell you this game was boring and sucked and leave it at that.

But this game was boring and sucked.

Noah Syndergaard wasn’t his best self. He was out of sync from the start, and only last four innings after throwing 89 pitches, walking three and allowing three runs on four hits and two home runs. He struck out six, but that was about the only positive for Syndergaard last night.

On offense, the Mets couldn’t figure out Zack Eflin, or any of five relievers Gabe Kapler sent out there after he was done. The team mustered six hits all night, and three of them came from Amed Rosario, who raised his wRC+ to a respectable 88 on the season and has already turned into a very useful player.

Jerry Blevins gave up a run in an inning of relief, and he was followed by Paul Sewald and Tim Peterson, who both handled the last three innings and did not allow any more damage.

OTHER NEWS OF THE DAY

The Mets announced that Zack Wheeler will be shut down, which is probably for the best. At 182.1 innings for the season, Wheeler has thrown 96 more innings than he did last year, and obviously has not thrown this many innings since his 2014 season. Pumping the breaks is probably a good decision.

WHAT’S NEXT

The Mets will try to help Jacob deGrom’s Cy Young case when they head to DC to take on Max Scherzer and the Nationals on Friday night. Scherzer gets the ball against Jason Vargas at 7:10 p.m.

The night couldn’t have started much better for the Mets, as following a Brandon Nimmo walk and a Wilmer Flores single, suddenly hot Michael Conforto deposited a 2-2 pitch from Ivan Nova into the right field seats to quickly put the visitors up 3-0.

Lefty Jason Vargas, making his first start in six weeks, took the mound in the bottom of the first and encouragingly retired the top of the Pittsburgh line-up in order. But after the Mets went quietly in the second, Vargas’ follow-up inning of work did not quite go as swimmingly.

Elias Diaz led off the frame with a hit, and Freese then contributed his first dose of damage, blasting a two-run shot to left to cut the New York lead to 3-2.

After the bumpy first inning, Nova was able to settle in and navigate through the middle innings with minimal difficulty, and while Vargas tossed a 1-2-3 third, he ran into significant trouble after that. In the fourth, he gave up a single to Diaz and a pair of walks before getting Jordy Mercer to fly out to left to strand the bases loaded. But in the fifth, Vargas wasn’t as lucky. A one-out walk to Jordan Luplow chased the southpaw from the game, but relief ace Seth Lugo was not in top form. After getting his first batter, Josh Harrison, to fly to right, Lugo allowed a hit and a walk that brought Freese to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded. Predictably, he ripped one right up the middle for a two-run single that flipped the game and put Pittsburgh up 4-3.

The Mets quickly responded in the next half inning, but they did so in strange fashion.

Conforto and Jose Bautista both walked to start the road sixth, which prompted Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle to replace Nova with hard-throwing righty Edgar Santana. Mets’ new everyday second baseman, (more on that later) Jeff McNeil, was then asked to lay down a sacrifice bunt, and he did even better than that. McNeil dropped a perfect bunt down the third base line, causing Santana to rush the throw to first without setting his feet and, after the throwing error, New York had the bases loaded with nobody out. Kevin Plawecki then struck out for the first out, but then things got weird. Jose Reyes hit a hard line drive to left field that Luplow caught on the run, and while the ball was clearly not deep enough to score Conforto from third base, Luplow unleashed a downright terrible throw to the plate that sailed to the backstop and allowed the Mets to tie the game on the throwing error.

New York got scoreless relief work from all of Tyler Bashlor, Jacob Rhame, Jerry Blevins and Anthony Swarzak, while Pittsburgh’s Kyle Crick and Felipe Vazquez were close to untouchable, and thus this game headed to the bottom of the ninth still tied at four apiece. On came Tim Peterson, the Mets’ seventh pitcher of the evening, and he was not quite as fortunate as the previous relievers.

Harrison led off the Pirates’ ninth with an infield hit, and when Gregory Polanco pulled a hit of his own through the hole, the Mets’ chances of getting this game to extra innings suddenly looked exceedingly bleak. New York intentionally walked Diaz to load the bases and set up a force at every base, but in doing so they brought Freese to the plate, whom they hadn’t retired all night. On the first pitch Peterson threw him, Freese crushed a line drive to the right center field fence to walk off the game and send the home fans home happy.

Tonight, New York will send ace right hander Jacob deGrom to the hill against the Pirates Trevor Williams, a game that looks like a pitcher’s dual on paper.

***

Roughly an hour before this game started news surfaced that the Mets had traded second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera to the division rival Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Double-A right-hander Franklyn Kilome. It doesn’t mean much in the Mets organization, but our own Jeffrey Paternostro estimated that Kilome, who has shown some inconsistency throughout his career and is likely to end up as a reliever, could jump right into the top 5 in the system. Considering the fact that Cabrera is a rental, Kilome could easily end up being a great deal for the Mets.

Originally in the starting lineup, Cabrera was scratched and McNeil moved to second base with Reyes joining the the starting lineup at third. With the late transaction, the Mets were obviously unable to get a roster replacement to Pittsburgh in time to be active for the game, and thus played a man short on Friday night. One man who did make it in time was new Met Austin Jackson, who is either going to replace Jose Bautista or fit in as a fourth outfielder or maybe be the new closer.

Photo credit: Charles LeClaire – USA Today Sports

Corey Oswalt got the ball for the Mets in this one and did all right for himself, giving up two earned runs on three hits over five innings, while striking out four and walking two. Even though he had only thrown 62 pitches in the fifth inning, he was pulled from the game in a questionable decision by Mickey Callaway to pinch hit Phillip Evans for him in an RBI spot, though Oswalt did apparently jam his hand while swinging the bat earlier in the game. That said, it was still a fine start for the young Oswalt, who only got the nod yesterday because of Noah Syndergaard’s virus. In fact, this was actually Oswalt’s fourth straight serviceable start. Now, keeping him in the rotation is not a total necessity, but the best argument for him to stick around is that he’s decidedly not Jason Vargas.

Anyway, the Mets were trailing 2-0 by the time the fifth inning rolled around, but that was when the offense broke out. A Kevin Plawecki RBI single got the Mets on the board, and a little later Evans drove in the tying run when he pinch-hit for Oswalt. Then — get this — the Mets executed a double steal, which feels like something we haven’t seen since Jose Reyes’s first tenure with the Mets. That set it up for Amed Rosario to drive in the two runners on a base hit to give the Mets a 4-2 lead. Jose Bautista (who I still can’t believe is actually a Met) added two more in the bottom of the sixth with a towering dinger off the second deck, the kind of prodigious home run he became famous for.

The bullpen, shockingly, handed back a couple of runs in the seventh when Tim Peterson (who I also still can’t believe is actually a Met, although for different reasons) served up a two-run homer to Freddy Galvis. Robert Gsellman came on after him and took care of business, and Anthony Swarzak handled the ninth for his second save of the season as the Mets continue to piece together the shattered remains of their Jeurys Familia-less bullpen.

As an aside, Reyes notched another single for sixth hit in last 19 at bats. If you’re scoring at home, that is a .315 batting average. Perhaps Reyes is finally rounding back into the barely-useful, tenuously rosterable bench player that he was last year instead of just the not-useful, completely unrosterable player he’s been this year. Maybe the Mets were actually right about him the whole time, and it was we, the children, who were wrong?

OTHER NEWS OF THE DAY

The big news finally came. After six days of the Mets stalling and waiting for multiple doctors’ opinions, they finally came to the decision yesterday for Yoenis Cespedes to undergo season-ending surgery in order to correct the bone spurs and calcification in both heels which have caused many of his leg problems over the years. The recovery is expected to be 8-10 months, which would put his return at around April or May of next year in a best-case scenario.

It sounds like the actual wait for the last six days was just so that the Mets could find out whether or not the contract was actually insured, which it is. So the Mets will indeed recoup a good amount of money that is owed to Cespedes over the rest of the season and the beginning of next year, similar to their current situation with David Wright. However, John Ricco would not say whether or not the money would be reinvested into the team.

The surgery is unfortunate for Cespedes, but necessary, and something that should have been done at least two months ago. This whole situation has been a total embarrassment for this entire organization, and it is their own fault. No reasonable person could have followed this saga for the last week — even being ignorant to the rest of the team’s mishandling of injuries and transparent dysfunction — and walk away with the belief that there is a modicum of organization within the Mets’ front office, or any accountability among their decision-makers. Under direction of the Wilpons, and without Sandy Alderson around to lead these misfits, the team appears to be about as organized as a kindergarten class. And much like kindergarteners, they like to point their fingers at other people (read: the players) when they do something bad.

Meanwhile, if the Wilpons are serious about contending next year, it is their absolute duty to reinvest the money saved back into the payroll for next season. Unfortunately, John Ricco’s non-answer to that question already probably tells you what they intend to do with it.

Photo credit: Andy Marlin – USA Today Sports

News broke late Friday night of an impending trade with the Athletics for closer Jeurys Familia, which was finally finalized at 3:50 p.m Saturday, just as the Yankees scored their seventh run of the ballgame. The Mets were reportedly seeking prospects in the higher levels of the minors and that’s what they will receive in Bobby Wahl, a reliever with MLB experience who’s currently in Triple-A. He’ll sit in the mid-90s and touch triple digits with his fastball to go along with a hard breaker. The Mets have a type of reliever they love to target, and Wahl fits the same mold as Gerson Bautista, Eric Hanhold and others the team has recently acquired via trade.

The other player coming to Queens (eventually) is Will Toffey, a fourth-round selection by the A’s in last year’s draft. He played his college ball at Vanderbilt but holds just a .733 OPS in his first 373 minor league at-bats, split between short-season and Advanced-A. He doesn’t fit the typical third base profile -he’s more of a line drive hitter than a home run guy- but he’s got a chance to become a second-division regular.

The Mets also acquired an apparently $1 million of international pool money, which isn’t enough to stop this from being a disappointing haul overall. The Mets already have this type of relief pitcher in the system and have been reluctant thus far to even use them. Toffey doesn’t currently project as an impact player at the major league level. There’s not much good to say about this deal, folks.

Anyway, Old Friend Yoenis Cespedes returned to the lineup Friday night but had some interesting and revealing postgame comments. He’s dealing with an issue in both heels that can only be corrected with surgery, which holds an 8-10 month recovery time. Cespedes is unlikely to ever play healthy without the surgery, and there’s no better time for him to have it than right now. The Mets are out of contention and need a healthy Cespedes if they truly want to compete next season. Running a broken down player who has worked incredibly hard to return into the lineup in the midst of a lost season is very Mets.

The even bigger story is that the Mets are publicly saying they were unaware of the chronic heel issues. This seems highly unlikely, of course, as they’ve given Cespedes two separate physicals before acquiring him and had to be aware of the severity of the injury. Manager Mickey Callaway was completely unaware of Yo’s postgame comments, which just confirms the many suspicions about the lack of communication between the front office and the coaching staff.

As for the actual baseball game, Steven Matz was tagged for five earned runs in five innings of work. Both relievers who pitched Saturday, Tim Peterson and Anthony Swarzak, each allowed a run as well. The final score was much closer than the game actually was, as Aroldis Chapman couldn’t find the strike zone and almost allowed the Mets to tie things up in the ninth inning. Yankee manager Aaron Boone pulled his closer for Chasen Shreve, who secured the final three outs and earned the save. Michael Conforto homered and Amed Rosario added another three-hit game to his resume, but the Mets only picked up five hits on the afternoon.

Photo credit: Andy Marlin – USA Today Sports 

For the 51st time, it wasn’t the Mets.

WHAT HAPPENED, THE GOOD:

There were plenty of bad things that happened on Sunday, but cheer up. It wasn’t all for naught, right? There were…some good things that happened. Right? …Right. Here were the positives that came out of Sunday:

• Brandon Nimmo singled in the seventh to break up the Nathan Eovaldi perfect game
• Devin Mesoraco singled in the ninth inning
• Tyler Bashlor and Tim Peterson threw clean innings
• Jacob deGrom was selected to the 2018 National League All-Star team

Surely more happened, though. Well, uhh, I mean…there was [checks notes] a 9-0 game completed in under three hours?

WHAT HAPPENED, YESTERDAY:

The Mets started the day by dropping a series to the Tampa Bay Rays in style — being near-perfect game-d by Nathan Eovaldi amid a 9-0 loss. To make matters worse, the Mets ended the day with the realization of Brandon Nimmo as an egregious All-Star snub.

WHAT HAPPENS, TODAY:

Now just a game ahead of the Miami Marlins for the worst record in the National League, the Mets will face the red-hot Philadelphia Phillies four times in three days. With two games on Monday, the Mets will send Zack Wheeler and Corey Oswalt to the mound to face Aaron Nola and Zach Eflin. The Mets will surely face stiff competition as they attempt to not enter the All-Star break as owners of the title “worst team in the NL.”

Photo credit: Gregory Fisher – USA Today Sports

Some of us are still watching these games, for whatever reason. Maybe we enjoy being frustrated on some level. Maybe we’re just too damn hot from the heat wave. Regardless of the reason, we didn’t even get the usual enjoyment of GKR, with Gary Apple and Ron taking over the broadcasting while the real Gary, Keith and Steve Gelbs all take a vacation.

With our commentary on the zeitgeist of being a Met fan out of the way, the pitching matchup; Marco Estrada for the Blue Jays and Zack Wheeler for the Mets. Both have heard their names come up in trade rumors, and it’s not impossible that any start for Wheeler might be his last in a Mets uniform. That offered a nice secondary plot point for Game 1 of the Jose Bautista revenge series.

Game recap

In an unfortunate turn, Estrada faced only three Mets before departing with an injury. He struck out Brandon Nimmo, then walked Bautista and allowed a home run to Asdrubal Cabrera, all while showing a significant velocity drop and a total lack of control. Jake Petricka replaced him and gave up another two-run home run in the second, this time to Devin Mesoraco. The Mets had a very quick 4-0 lead.

Wilmer Flores added another run with a solo shot in the fourth, extending his hitting streak to 10 games, but Wheeler was the real highlight at this point. Wheeler was perfect through three, before allowing a walk to old friend Curtis Granderson leading off the fourth. Teoscar Hernandez followed with a single but was thrown out at second, and Wheeler worked through the traffic on the basepaths to hold the Blue Jays off the board. Wheeler looked great, consistently living in the upper-90s and snapping off sharp breaking balls seemingly at ease.

Wheeler finally faltered in the eighth, when Granderson struck again with an RBI double after a walk and a hit by pitch. He bounced back with an eight pitch sixth, and the Mets picked him up with another run in the top of the seventh, when Michael Conforto drove in Nimmo (who had walked) with a double to stretch the Met lead to 6-1.

Mesoraco had to depart after being hit on a follow through, and maybe that’s where everything went wrong. More likely, it’s simply because the Mets bullpen is terrible. Wheeler struck out the first man he faced in the seventh before allowing a single to Randal Grichuk that Bautista botched into a triple. That was the end of Wheeler’s night, who was replaced by Anthony Swarzak. And here we go.

Swarzak got the first out, a ground ball from Lourdes Gurriel that scored Grichuk from third. He then walked Devon Travis, allowed a double to Granderson, threw a wild pitch that scored Travis, walked Teoscar Hernandez and got pulled from the game. Robert Gsellman replaced him and left a changeup too far out over the middle of the plate that Yangervis Solarte deposited in right field for a game-tying home run.

Tim Peterson allowed another two-run home run in the eighth, and the Mets couldn’t get anything done after putting two men on in the ninth. Bautista got on base four times and Wheeler was great, but the bullpen implosion blew a 5-0 lead and robbed Wheeler of a well-deserved win. He now has no wins since April 29, and the Mets are now 33-49 on the season.

Thoughts from the Game

It doesn’t need to be said, but GKR – particularly the first two – are a blessing from the baseball gods. Mets teams over the past decade-and-a-half have been mostly terrible but watching with excellent broadcasters makes things at least somewhat enjoyable. Put Gary Apple in the booth instead and we go from figuratively no reason to watch to literally no reason to watch.

As for the team itself, there are no new thoughts. The front office neglected to build a real bullpen and it’s consistently blown up in their face this season. Turns out when you sign a pop-up reliever who has one year of being good and 10 years of being terrible on his resume, you’re not going to improve your pitching staff very much. Shocking, that.

Other Mets News

Not much else to report here. Tim Tebow got hit in the head by a fly ball that turned into a triple in the Eastern League All-Star Game, which was sort of fun. Other than that, same old, same old.

Photo credit: Nick Turchiaro – USA Today Sports

And that fits pefectly with the feeling around the Mets right now. There’s nothing left to say, and I’ve given up. At some point, you just run out of words. An explanation is not necessary. Analysis is not necessary. Words are not necessary. There’s truly just nothing left to say. And you definitely can’t say the result of last night’s game is surprising, that’s for sure. You can’t say a game that had good starting pitching, limited offense and a complete bullpen meltdown is unique for the 2018 Mets. Every game follows the same blueprint these days. You can only write and/or read so many recaps of the same game again and again.

This team is seriously bad. That’s it. There’s truly nothing else that needs to be said. There’s no point laboring it anymore. We might not know exactly how they got to this point, but it doesn’t matter anymore; they’re just not good. They’re one of the worst teams in baseball. And there’s absolutely no sign this precipitous fall won’t continue for three more months.

Last night, Zack Wheeler pitched a hell of a game, tossing seven shutout innings with seven punchouts. He allowed one walk and five hits. On the whole, he’s pitched like a perfectly fine mid-rotation stater for a month. His only bad start this month was a start in Atlanta, where he had taken a 2-1 lead into the sixth inning, but three of his runners scoring on an Ozzie Albies grand slam given up by Paul Sewald messed up his line.

Basically, the Mets have been getting good-to-great starting pitching from four of five spots in the rotation for about a month now, and they’ve only won four games in the month of June. It’s truly incredible.

Of course, Wheeler left the game with a 3-0 lead. The Pirates pushed a run across in the eighth off the overworked and suddenly-bad Robert Gsellman, but suddenly-good Tim Peterson came in to get out of the inning and hold the lead at 3-1. But then, instead of keeping Peterson, who had only thrown nine pitches, in the game for the ninth, Mickey Callaway turned to his closer Jeurys Familia — who threw 28 pitches in 1.2 innings on Tuesday night — for the save.

Familia did not record an out. Three straight singles and a walk to his first four hitters chased the closer from the game before he had even blown the lead. Anthony Swarzak came in with the bases loaded and nobody out, trying to protect what was now a 3-2 lead. He promptly gave up a two-run single to David Freese on his first pitch, and the game was pretty much over from there. The Pirates took a 4-3 lead and didn’t look back. They added one more in the inning, and the Mets predictably went down punchless in the ninth, sending the Pirates home with a 5-3 win.

The Mets have not won a series since May 18-20. There are no words.

WHAT’S NEXT:

Unfortunately not the apocalypse, though the Mets will go to Miami to battle the Marlins tomorrow, which sounds just as close to the end of the world as we’re going to get. Jacob deGrom squares off with Sandy Alcantara, who will be making his big-league debut, at 7:10 p.m.

Photo credit: Brad Penner – USA Today Sports

Vargas Did What?

Given their crumbling depth in the starting rotation, you would think that Mickey Callaway would squeeze every inning he could out of his starters. Wednesday, he did the exact opposite. The wildly inconsistent and ineffective Vargas took the mound and came out firing. The lefthander shut out the Braves across five frames, surrendering two hits and one walk, and striking out two. At only 65 pitches, the expectation would be that Vargas would go deep into this game. Instead, Mickey Callaway opted to pull him after the fifth, giving an early hook to his pitcher throwing on just three days rest. The result is not all bad, however. Allowing Vargas to leave on a high note may instill some confidence and lead to more productive outings going forward.

The Magnificent Amed Rosario

Amidst his early-season struggles, many doubts arose surrounding the viability of Rosario’s future. A consensus top prospect, the impatience was semi-warranted. You either have it or you don’t. The good news is that Rosario really seems to finally be putting everything together. In the last seven days, the 22-year-old is batting .357/.400/.571 with a home run, four RBIs and two stolen bases. That includes the two huge extra base hits he chipped in last night — a triple in the seventh and a double in the ninth. Both resulted in Rosario coming across to score two very important insurance runs. He also made a sparkling diving stop to begin a 6-4-3 double play and get Jeurys Familia out of a tumultuous eighth inning.

We’ve Found Nimmo

This almost hurts to write for two reasons. First, I’ve been a big supporter of Jay Bruce and have continually advocated for him to remain in the lineup and work out of his slump. Second, I was completely in favor of shipping Brandon Nimmo to Pittsburgh in exchange for Andrew McCutchen. Well, it’s safe to say I was dead wrong. From the moment spring training kicked off, Nimmo has looked like a quality big leaguer that deserves the opportunity to play every day at the major league level. There is no reason to leave Nimmo on the bench just on his plate discipline alone. To make matters sweeter, it looks like his bat is coming around now too. Over his last eight games, Nimmo has posted a .333/.444/.733 slash line with two home runs, five RBIs and two stolen bases. In four at-bats, Nimmo notched two hits Wednesday — a bloop single that drove home Rosario in the seventh and a line drive doubles over the head of Nick Markakis in the ninth. Those two RBI knocks proved critical and he is now up to a scorching hot .970 OPS on the season. Could we possibly see Brandon Nimmo make an appearance at the All-Star game this July?

Joey Bats Hits Balls Hard

Sandy Alderson already pulled a rabbit out of his hat by turning Matt Harvey into Devin Mesoraco. Now, after plucking Jose Bautista from the depths of obscurity, he may just have found a diamond in the rough. During his stint in Atlanta this season, it didn’t seem like there was much baseball left in Bautista. After all, he was 5-for-37. Bautista is already well past that number as a member of the Mets and scorched a double to left field last night. Even when the hits aren’t falling, he is still finding a way to hit the ball hard. The last seven days of Joey Bats have been magnificent, with the 37-year-old sporting a 1.105 OPS. If Wednesday was any indication, Jose Bautista may just prove to be a valuable piece down the stretch.

A-Gon is Still Hanging Around

If I were to be completely honest, I would have ventured to say that Adrian Gonzalez would be long gone by now. Instead, the other geriatric player in the Mets starting lineup is not only hanging around but producing his fair share. Gonzalez posted a 2-4 night at the plate, driving in two runs. He opened the scoring in the first with a rocket ground rule double and picked up an insurance run in the eighth when he drove Jose Bautista home. Over his last 25 games, Gonzalez looks like an All-Star, batting .305 with seven extra-base hits, 12 RBI, and an OPS of .850. Maybe first base isn’t such a big problem for the Mets after all.

New Arms in Atlanta

In order to bolster their depleted bullpen, the Mets called up three relievers prior to Wednesday’s game. Tim Peterson and Buddy Baumann joined the Mets from Las Vegas, while Scott Copeland departed Binghamton. Peterson made his first major league experience after relieving Vargas in the sixth. Despite surrendering a home run to Johan Camargo (in the exact same spot that he hit his walk-off to in the game prior), Peterson looked good. The righthander posted two frames with a walk being the only other blemish besides the home run. Jeurys Familia and Robert Gsellman combined for the final two innings of the game, with Gsellman recording his second save of the season after a perfect ninth.

The Mets return home to Citi Field tonight to face the Chicago Cubs. Seth Lugo makes his debut as a starter against Jose Quintana at 7:10 p.m. And before I go, shout out to Ed Kranepool. He did not deserve the Don LaGreca treatment on ESPN Radio yesterday.

Photo credit: Jason Getz – USA Today Sports

The Mets had 12 hits and scored six runs, which felt like an explosion considering the team’s recent offensive performance. The six runs were the most they’ve scored in a game since last Tuesday, when the Amazins’ put up a 12 spot against the Blue Jays. Brandon Nimmo and Michael Conforto both hit solo home runs and Wilmer Flores chipped in with three hits. Conforto finally looks “right” at the plate and I’ll have an in depth look at what he’s doing differently later this week. Devin Mesoraco had two hits to continue his unexpected but welcomed strong start to his Mets career. Jay Bruce looked competitive at the dish and reached three times on the afternoon. Amed Rosario drew a walk in his only plate appearance! Jerry Blevins was called upon for some mop up duty and didn’t allow a run. Also, Jose Reyes reached base twice?

THE BAD

Adrian Gonzalez was 1-5 with a team-high seven men left on base. The Mets have better internal options (see Alonso, Peter) and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for the organization to justify Gonzalez’s roster spot. Reyes reached twice and still has a .200 on-base percentage, which should tell you all you need to know. He also grounded into the Mets’ only double play and even made an error out at short while Luis Guillorme sat and wondered what exactly he needs to do to play. Asdrubal Cabrera, the team’s best player so far this season, was slow to get up after a play at second and was pinch hit for but should be good to go on Sunday. The Mets would be in big trouble should Cabrera require a DL stint of any kind.

THE (REALLY) UGLY

After allowing five earned runs in just three innings of work Saturday, Jason Vargas’ ERA is up to an unfathomable 10.62 in his 20.1 innings this season. The Mets have given Vargas five starts now and plan to give him another, but he’s been absolutely dreadful thus far. Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman both represent much more competitive options, but they’re also two of the Mets best relievers and a move would decimate an already thin relief corps. That’s because AJ Ramos, supposedly one of the Mets’ best high-leverage options, has been awful this season as well. After walking in the winning run Friday, Ramos was lit up for three runs on three hits and one walk in only two-thirds of an inning. It was a low-leverage situation and Ramos still wasn’t effective and at this point, your guess is as good as mine as to where Ramos and the Mets go from here. Chris Flexen was also shelled for eight hits and three walks in only two innings of work. Although he was only charged for three earned runs, Flexen was terrible Saturday and now isn’t available for Monday’s doubleheader; he’s likely to be sent down for P.J Conlon or possibly Tim Peterson, as the Mets will need another pitcher for the aforementioned doubleheader with Atlanta. Look for Conlon rather than Peterson, as he’s already on the 40-man and wouldn’t require a corresponding roster move.

Photo credit: Benny Sieu – USA Today Sports