I think we’re gonna have many more games like this the last few months. Pretty unspectacular, etc. The Yankee offense had almost nothing going on against Jacob deGrom and, well, the Mets bats scored seven, which was more than enough. The Yankees are bad and boring (for now) and this is this kind of game you get once in awhile.
The Mets Scoring Sequences
This game can be summarized by describing how the Mets scored. First, they jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the bottom third. After retiring the first eight hitters, Masahiro Tanaka gave up a single to … Jacob deGrom. Against the next hitter, Alejandro De Aza, Tanaka threw a 91-mph sinker that found the meat of the barrel and landed in the right field seats. It was one of those “well, that happened” moments. De Aza is not a guy known for his power but then again, he did (somehow) hit for a 1.031 OPS in the month of July.
The Mets added another in the fifth. Travis d’Arnaud, leading off the inning, hit a Tanaka slider into the left field seats for a 3-0 lead. It was a hanger of a pitch and d’Arnaud reached out to make a solid contact. They tacked on four more runs in the seventh to make this game pretty much out of reach.
Wilmer Flores singled and reached second on Brett Gardner’s throwing error to left to start the inning. Michael Conforto followed it up with an RBI double to left to make it 4-0. Two batters later, Matt Reynolds hit a soft fly ball RBI single to drive Conforto in. Tanaka surrendered another base hit to deGrom before being lifted for Richard Bleier.
Bleier, he of the 3.86 K/9 in the Triple-A, was tasked to face pinch-hitting Yoenis Cespedes. Cespedes hit a pretty hard grounder towards the left of Starlin Castro. Castro couldn’t handle it and throw to first base in time to get Yoenis as another run scored for a 6-0 Mets lead. Neil Walker followed it up with an RBI double to score another for Metropolitans. Yawn. By the end of the inning, all seven runs that Mets scored were charged to Tanaka.
At least for the first eight batters, it seemed like Tanaka was going to be on a roll along with deGrom. However, bad pitches here and there snowballed into a mediocre 7 ER-outing.
Didi Bomb!
The Yankees were kept scoreless up to the very last inning. As it turned top of ninth, many on Twitter were quick to point out that Yankees have never ben shut out in Citi Field, as if that streak was going to break tonight. Didi Gregorius said “not so fast!” On the second pitch of the inning, Gregorius took a slow curve from Jon Niese into the right field seats to erase the shutout. 7-1 Mets. Well, that’s something, right?
As you know, Didi has been one of the very few bright spots of the team this year. After tonight, he’s hitting for a .290/.318/.453 line for season, good for a 104 wRC+. He’s slugging higher than Bryce Harper, Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez and Eric Hosmer this season. That short porch probably helped but still, how about that?
Leftovers
The first two guys of the lineup — Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury — were held to 1-for-8 tonight (Gardner struck out three times). They went 4-for-10 last night with 2 RBI’s, playing a big part of the Yanks’ exciting win. I feel like they both have been underperforming this year and that kind of translates to how the offense has done in general this year.
Box score, highlights, WPA and standings
Here’s tonight’s box score, video highlights, WPA and updated standings.
Source: FanGraphs
The Yankees are back in Bronx tomorrow for the second half of the Subway Series. Chad Green will face Steven Matz in the battle of young starters.
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