Mets' Sean Manaea continues to struggle as club gets blown out by Phillies
Mets starter Sean Manaea, left, looks on as the Phillies' Harrison Bader, bottom right, rounds the bases after hitting a home run during the second inning on Tuesday in Philadelphia. Credit: AP/Chris Szagola
PHILADELPHIA — Here are a few dire but undeniable facts about the Mets right now:
Kodai Senga and Sean Manaea have mostly been ineffective, with the former being banished to Triple-A Syracuse. Their bats have gone completely silent. They can’t seem to win on the road. And they haven’t won a game this season when trailing after the eighth inning.
Somehow, they still have claw marks on the third and final wild-card spot, but after being crushed by the Phillies, 9-3, at Citizens Bank Park Tuesday, that, too, increasingly is in question.
With their fourth straight loss, they dropped a nearly insurmountable nine games behind the Phillies for the NL East lead with 17 to play, while the red-hot Giants took the field for their late game in San Francisco just 2 1⁄2 games behind them for that final spot (the Mets hold the tiebreaker).
The Mets are 31-42 on the road, with eight more away games this season, and are 0-and-61 when trailing after the eighth. Tuesday, the offense languished against the Phillies, not registering a hit for the first four innings against lefty Ranger Suarez, who also recorded a career-high 12 strikeouts.
“It’s just a tough stretch right now,” said Juan Soto, whose stolen base in the eighth put him in the 30-30 club. “We’ve just got to find a way to play better baseball . . . We’re trying to figure out what’s going on but we’re definitely working. Those guys are out there, they’re working really hard from top to bottom. They come in every day, they come in, [are] hitting early and doing their stuff. I think we’re doing anything we can to try to get out of it.”
Manaea pulled off something of a reverse of what he’s done since returning from the injured list: Whereas he’s generally started strong and hit a wall, he allowed two runs in each of the first and second inning before becoming so visibly frustrated, that manager Carlos Mendoza took him to the tunnel for a chat. Then, Manaea allowed almost nothing else.
He ended up giving up four runs and five hits with a walk and five strikeouts in five innings, allowing just one baserunner in the final 3 1⁄3.
“I just said [forget] it,” he said. “It can’t get any worse. I just let go and started pitching . . . It’s a letting go of all these things I want to do and just going out and pitching, just trying to be free. I feel like I actually did that the third through the fifth and that’s just the biggest differentiator.”
The Mets, meanwhile, managed just one hit until the seventh, when Mark Vientos hit a leadoff homer off David Robertson, cutting the lead to 4-1 and snapping a 15-inning scoreless streak.
Kyle Schwarber hit a three-run homer off Justin Hagenman in the bottom of that inning for his NL-leading 50th of the season — a 437-foot monster shot to center. In the eighth, Soto singled in Jose Siri to make it 7-2; Soto also stole his 30th base that inning, putting him two homers shy of being one of 16 MLB players to steal 30 bases and hit 40 homers in a season.
Bryson Stott and Harrison Bader added RBI singles in the bottom of the eighth. Jeff McNeil hit an RBI single in the ninth.
Manaea, pitching with loose bodies in his elbow, allowed a two-run double to Nick Castellanos in the first and back-to-back homers to Otto Kemp and Bader in the second to give the Phillies a 4-0 lead.
He has a 5.76 ERA over 11 games and has given up 10 homers, but Mendoza said after the game that the lefty will make his next start.
“This is a guy we’re counting on,” Mendoza said, adding that he took Manaea aside after the second because “he was showing a little bit of frustration there, which you understand but at the same time, you’ve got to fight. You’ve got to fight. I’m glad he was able to respond to it.”
The Mets, who were held scoreless by Aaron Nola and three Phillies relievers Monday, picked up exactly where they left off against Suarez. Brandon Nimmo broke up Suarez’s no-hitter by grounding a leadoff, fifth-inning single through the right side of the infield, but he was immediately erased when Starling Marte hit into a 6-6-3 double play.
The Mets did get the next two runners on via walk but Siri, newly reinstated from the injured list, struck out swinging.
Still, asked if they could hold off the Giants, Mendoza was adamant.
“We will, we will,” he said. “We’ve got to play better and we’ve got to fight. We’re in the middle of it. There’s no time to feel sorry. We’ve got to fight. What’s in the past is in the past.”
Maybe, but the past can also have a way of sinking the future.
Siri returns
After missing nearly the entire season with a broken left tibia, Siri played center and batted ninth in his return, going 1-for-4 with a double. Mendoza said Siri will likely see time against lefties and that the struggling Cedric Mullins “will face some righties when we need to, especially when guys are tough right-on-right, or [righties out of the] bullpen. We’ll be aggressive in pinch-hit situations and we’ll go from there.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
