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MILWAUKEE — The Mets could count on respectable starting pitching for most of this season, even as the offense sputtered, but lately those once-dependable arms have appeared worn.
Rookie Tylor Megill followed subpar starts from Marcus Stroman and Taijuan Walker over the previous two games with a clunker of his own Friday night, moving the Mets closer to official elimination from the postseason with a 5-1 loss to the Brewers at American Family Field.
On a day when the Cardinals swept a doubleheader to stretch their winning streak to 14 games, officially eliminating the Mets from the wild-card race, Megill surrendered three homers and four runs overall in four innings. The Mets (73-80) lost for the 11th time in 14 games and had a tragic number of three in the NL East race, as the first place Braves played a later game (after losing in the resumption of a suspended contest) in San Diego.
Megill allowed homers to Kolten Wong, Willy Adames and Christian Yelich as he turned in a third lackluster start in his last four.
Before the game, J.D. Davis called it a “bitter pill” that the Mets are on life support in a season of such NL East mediocrity — with the division winner unlikely to reach 90 wins.
It’s not so much the Mets’ 11 losses in 13 straight games against the Dodgers and Giants in August (which buried them in the standings) that irked Davis as much as other letdowns, facing beatable opponents.
“Take for example the Pirates series,” Davis said, referring to the first three games after the All-Star break, of which the Mets lost two. “Should we have swept the Pirates? Yes, absolutely. It’s those little games where we should have taken care of business.”
Davis was then reminded the Mets also split a four-game series against the Pirates at Citi Field to close the first half.
“It’s just those kind of games,” he said. “If you added up all those games, looking at it, how many games back are we, seven or eight? How many games should we have won that were like that, seven or eight? Ten? Play the ‘what if’ game. It sucks, but that is the way baseball goes. I think it’s a tougher pill to swallow when you say we’ll learn from it, but there’s only so much time that we as baseball players get … four or five years, a little stint with whatever team, that we have to take advantage of those moments and we know we didn’t.”
The five other division winners will either finish with at least 90 victories or are on pace to do so. The fact the NL East became the NL “Least” and the Mets were facing elimination with a week still remaining adds to the sting of a fifth straight season in which they will have missed the playoffs.
After the Mets were swept in three games at Philadelphia in early August, Pete Alonso dismissed the team’s slide by saying, “We’ve got this.” Asked about that comment on Friday, the first baseman said he was speaking from his heart.
“I always believe in my guys,” Alonso said. “It’s something, I believe in everybody in here and I love competing with these guys and it’s really a special group of individuals, and it’s frustrating and disappointing, but I am very happy I get to compete with these guys every day.
“I still think we can finish the season strong. I don’t know what that is going to look like regarding the standings, but I still believe that this team can come together and still play well despite where we are at in the season, but it’s frustrating.”
Davis said it’s futile putting too much thought into what went wrong for the club.
“If we are going to lose that many games against the Dodgers and Giants we have to make it up against those other teams,” Davis said. “That is kind of the tougher pill to swallow, because we know we should play better and we should have taken advantage of it. Nothing we can do now, except swallow the pill.”
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