interim manager Andy Green\u2019s in-dugout Mets debut<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe Mets (34-48) are now a season-worst 14 games below .500.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough to win baseball games when you put one run on the board,\u201d Green said. \u201cObviously, the guy on the other side is one of the best pitchers in baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
An emotional afternoon in Queens preceded a tumultuous first inning for the Mets, as rookie left-hander Zach Thornton ran into immediate trouble.<\/p>\n
Called up from Triple-A Syracuse to start Friday\u2019s game, Thornton surrendered three consecutive hits before recording an out.<\/p>\n
The third of those hits \u2014 a Bryce Harper RBI single \u2014 gave the Phillies a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
But the 24-year-old Thornton, making only his second MLB start, settled in from there. That was the only run Thornton allowed over six innings, and he struck out seven with five hits and a walk.<\/p>\n
The Mets nearly answered against Wheeler in the bottom of the first, as Soto \u2014 with a runner on first base \u2014 drilled a 397-foot drive to right-center.<\/p>\n
But Hill ranged far to his left, and he didn\u2019t slow down as he leapt at the wall. Hill\u2019s arm was stretched well beyond the wall when the ball landed in his glove.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an unbelievable catch,\u201d Soto said. \u201cWhen you see the replays, you see how impressive it was. He didn\u2019t have any timing \u2014 he just went to the wall and jumped. That was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
That proved to be a consequential play, as the Mets managed only one run against Wheeler \u2014 a fourth-inning RBI single by Jared Young \u2014 in the veteran right-hander\u2019s seven innings.<\/p>\n
The score was tied, 1-1, when reliever Huascar Brazob\u00e1n entered to begin the seventh, replacing Thornton, who had thrown 78 pitches.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were relatively close to the pitch count,\u201d Green said. \u201cWe felt good about Brazo going out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brazob\u00e1n faltered, however, allowing a walk and two hits, the last of which being a two-out RBI single by Trae Turner that put the Phillies up, 2-1.<\/p>\n
That proved to be too much to overcome for the Mets, who didn\u2019t record another hit after Young\u2019s one-out single in the fourth until Francisco Lindor lined a single with two outs in the ninth. Young then struck out looking against Phillies closer Jhoan Duran for the game\u2019s final out.<\/p>\n
Wheeler \u2014 who spent his first five seasons with the Mets \u2014 now boasts a 3.23 ERA over 19 career starts against them.<\/p>\n
He improved to 8-1 with a 2.03 ERA this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought the energy was good,\u201d Green said. \u201cThe effort was what you want. We just weren\u2019t able to square up balls.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mets fired Mendoza on Friday morning after being swept in a four-game series by the Chicago Cubs.<\/p>\n
Mendoza went 206-199 (.509) over two-and-a-half seasons as the Mets\u2019 manager, a tenure that included a trip to the NLCS in 2024 but just a .414 winning percentage over his final 174 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really close to him. I talked to him a lot. To see him go is tough,\u201d Soto said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s moves every day here. You see bullpen guys going up and down, trades, starters moving to the bullpen. You\u2019re always expecting those moves. Seeing Mendoza, it\u2019s just tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mets replaced Mendoza with Green, who has been the organization\u2019s senior vice president of player development since 2023.<\/p>\n
Green \u2014 who went 274-366 (.428) as the San Diego Padres\u2019 manager from 2016-19, mostly overseeing a rebuild \u2014 is set to return to the front office after the season, president of baseball operations David Stearns said<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut the Mets valued Green\u2019s 27 years of baseball experience \u2014 most of which have come in the dugout \u2014 as they sought a new voice amid their nightmarish start to the season.<\/p>\n
In the first game of Green\u2019s tenure, the Mets fell to 0-5 on this homestand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt fine. It\u2019s what I know,\u201d Green said of his return to the dugout. \u201cI will certainly make mistakes along the way, but the game was not moving any faster than a normal game has in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The manager is new, but the result was the same. Hours after they fired Carlos Mendoza, the Mets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[107244,26622,2032,20,9,11,10,50806,105317],"class_list":["post-279670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-andy-green","tag-carlos-mendoza","tag-mets","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-phillies","tag-zack-wheeler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}