NEW YORK \u2014 Considerate of a fan base swiftly exploring how better to spend its time at 7:10 each evening, the Mets eliminated the drama early from their latest and seventh consecutive loss on Friday.<\/p>\n
There was no tease with a quick start, no slow drip of the game slipping away, pretty much no hope at all by the end of the first inning.<\/p>\n
The Rangers scored six runs in the top of the first off Jonah Tong, cruising to an 8-3 win over the Mets in Jacob deGrom\u2019s return to Citi Field. By night\u2019s end, New York\u2019s lead in the National League wild-card race could be down to a half-game over Cincinnati (playing in West Sacramento) and\/or San Francisco (in Chavez Ravine).<\/p>\n
The Mets have lost seven straight on three different occasions this season; they hadn\u2019t done that since 1980 \u2014 not the year from that decade this club planned to emulate this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re frustrated, obviously,\u201d manager Carlos Mendoza said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get out of it. We\u2019ve got to find a way to get the job done and win one game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously very concerned,\u201d said Brandon Nimmo, whose 0-for-4 dropped his September OPS to .443. \u201cWe want to be in the playoffs, and we\u2019re not playing playoff baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeGrom allowed three runs on four hits over seven innings, striking out only two. He retired the final 15 Mets he faced. Opposing starters have thrown 12 1-2-3 innings against the Mets in the last two nights.<\/p>\n
Two weeks ago, when he made his major-league debut here, Tong called it everything he\u2019d ever dreamed of. In his third career start, it was an utter nightmare.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old lacked any command of his fastball from the start, and he didn\u2019t possess enough of his changeup to make it work as the focus of his arsenal. He walked two of the first three batters he faced before allowing five consecutive Rangers to reach with two outs. The first of those, Josh Jung, had flared an 0-2 fastball in on his hands into right field to open the scoring. An out there, and it\u2019s a different ballgame.<\/p>\n
But unlike in his last start in Cincinnati, Tong couldn\u2019t rebound from the early adversity. Alejandro Osuna followed Jung\u2019s RBI single with one of his own one pitch later, and Cody Freeman and Michael Helman delivered back-to-back two-run knocks later in the frame \u2014 Freeman\u2019s on a 2-2 fastball up, Helman\u2019s on a 3-2 fastball in. That was it from Tong, done after six runs and 2\/3 of an inning.<\/p>\n
In a season of short starts, Tong\u2019s was the briefest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sun is going to rise tomorrow,\u201d an emotional Tong said postgame. \u201cI\u2019ll have some time to reflect on this and get ready for the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
And of course, to serve as cruel juxtaposition, deGrom retired the Mets in order in the bottom of the inning on just six pitches.<\/p>\n
By 7:38 p.m., it was time to find something else to do this Friday night.<\/p>\n
The Mets have rebounded from a September seven-game losing streak (in the midst of a wild-card race with the Reds, even) before: It happened in 1999, and plenty of those players will be on hand for Saturday\u2019s Alumni Classic game at Citi Field. But of course, the worrying thing is that New York\u2019s slump turned three months old on Friday night. This has become the norm, with the club\u2019s outstanding start appearing more like the aberration with each passing day.<\/p>\n
Since they owned baseball\u2019s best record through June 11 at 45-24, the Mets are 31-48. No team has ever made the playoffs the same year it endured a 79-game stretch that bad. (The playoff team that came closest to that sustained futility? The 1973 Mets, who at one point went 32-47.) Only one team this century has finished above .500 with a 79-game stretch that bad (the 2014 Milwaukee Brewers, at 82-80).<\/p>\n
There are 14 games left.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know where we\u2019re at on the calendar,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cI have all the confidence we\u2019ll get through this, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Photo: Ishika Samant \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Considerate of a fan base swiftly exploring how better to spend its time at 7:10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,1830,85],"class_list":["post-139251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}