Ike Davis was given the night off, David Wright was sidelined with a fractured pinky and the Mets were way overdue for their first loss of the season anyway, but none of that made tonight’s 6-2 loss to Washington any easier to swallow for fans of the Amazins.
Nationals starter Ross Detwiler pitched brilliantly after getting out of a first inning jam. The young lefty struck out 6 Mets while walking only one in 5 innings of work. It looked like Detwiler was on his way to pitching 7 or 8 innings, but Washington manager Davey Johnson pulled him after just 71 pitches because of conditioning concerns.
Detwiler’s early exit turned out to be a boon for the Mets, but the Nats were able to score enough runs off of Dillon Gee and company to give their pen some breathing room. Ian Desmond led off the game with a solo home run off of Gee, who would settle down over the next four innings. However, in the 6th, Ryan Zimmerman led off with a double and back-to-back singles from Jayson Werth and former Met Xavier Nady forced Terry Collins to take Gee out of the ballgame.
Bobby Parnell came on to face Roger Bernadina with runners on first and second with one out and Bernadina hit a hard grounder to second. It look for a split second like the Mets might get out of the inning with just a 2-0 deficit, but Daniel Murphy had the ball bounce off his glove. Instead of two more outs for New York, another run came home for Washington. Wilson Ramos followed with a double that eluded the glove of Lucas Duda to make the score 4-0.
Gee finished with 6 strikeouts, one walk and one home run allowed in 5.1 innings pitched. He was able to get some whiffs with the change-up, which is a great sign, and the unfortunate error in the 6th inning let a couple of extra runs onto Gee’s register.
The Mets finally got on the board in the 7th after Werth made it 5-0 with an RBI single in the top half of the frame. Justin Turner, who was playing first base in Davis’ stead tonight, ripped an RBI single of his own to center field after Jason Bay kept the boo birds at bay (ugh) with a double.
In the 8th, the Mets would get another run as Ronny Cedeno (starting at third for Wright) doubled home Ruben Tejada, but any attempts to put up a crooked number were foiled. The 9th inning saw Brad Lidge finish off New York without much of a problem.
Turning Point: This game still looked very winnable until Murphy booted that potential double play ground ball in the 6th. Of course, some fans might have tuned out after the 1st inning, when the Mets got Tejada to third base with no outs but still failed to score.
Game Ball: Ronny Cedeno went 3 for 4 with an RBI double in his first Mets start. If Wright is to miss a lot more time with his fractured pinky finger, Collins might consider playing him at second and Murphy at third. Of course, it was as early as yesterday that Murphy looked fantastic at second base, so that might be an overreaction.
Next Game: Collins did well to only use Miguel Batista and Parnell out of the pen tonight, because Johan Santana is set to take the mound versus Steven Strasburg tomorrow, and both hurlers will likely be on pitch limits. The Mets have a slightly fresher pen going into the day game, but they’ll also be missing David Wright again.
Terry Collins said after the game that a hand specialist was going to take a look at Wright’s X-Rays on Wednesday. We’ll hopefully have more information when that happens.
