This is gnarly, folks. I think the five poop emojis might be a record. It goes without saying that things are rough for the pitching staff right now. The rotation suffered yet another injury this week when Griffin Canning went down with a season-ending Achilles tendon rupture. The Mets are having to cobble things together and it isn’t going well for them. This is having cascading effects on the bullpen, who are consistently being asked to pitch a lot of innings. As a result, we have many names from last week’s meter that have vanished with new names taking their place this week. The one small silver lining (I guess) is that the high leverage relievers mostly pitched well this week, but they weren’t really used much this week—especially in the Pirates series—because the games were not close.
One new name on this week’s meter is Frankie Montas, who finally made his Mets debut on Tuesday. That went really well, but his second start on Sunday went about as far from well as you can imagine. Montas held a potent Braves offense scoreless for five innings and then turned around and coughed up six runs in four innings to the league’s worst offense. You can’t predict baseball, Suzyn.
Paul Blackburn also made two starts this week, but one of them was thrown off course by a long rain delay. In Monday’s game, Blackburn at least pitched well enough to keep the Mets in the game, which is all you can really ask for at this point. He was charged with three runs in 4 2⁄3 innings, striking out five batters and walking three. His offense was unable to pick him up and he was tagged with the loss. On Saturday, Blackburn was staked to a 1-0 lead early and pitched a scoreless bottom of the first before the skies opened up. After about a 1.5 hour rain delay, Carlos Mendoza, having no good options, chose to send Blackburn back out there. It was apparent very quickly that this was a mistake. Blackburn clearly didn’t have it in the second inning and was removed from the game before recording an out. All told he was charged with three runs and took yet another loss.
José Buttó came in the game in relief of Blackburn on Saturday and did a good job to stop the bleeding in the second inning. He allowed one inherited runner to score via a sac fly, but that was it. He then proceeded to pitch a scoreless third inning as well. Buttó also immediately followed Blackburn on Monday and twirled 1 1⁄3 scoreless innings of relief in that outing. Buttó also contributed a scoreless seventh inning to Wednesday’s victory. It’s the second week in a row for Buttó in the green.
Brandon Waddell—one of the many new names on this week’s meter—was the unsung hero of Saturday’s game, pitching three scoreless innings in long relief while the game was still within reach for the Mets. Waddell also immediately preceded Buttó in Wednesday’s victory, throwing a scoreless sixth inning.
That appearance came in relief of Clay Holmes, who is the only starting pitcher to receive good marks this week. Griffin Canning was on his way to good marks as well because he began his start on Thursday with 2 2⁄3 scoreless innings before leaving the game due to injury. Holmes earned the win on Wednesday with five innings of one-run ball, though he did walk four batters, which limited his ability to go deep into the game. But compared to how everyone else is pitching, it was a gem.
Austin Warren, freshly up from Triple-A, was called into service in long relief after Canning’s injury-shortened outing and he did an excellent job. He pitched 2 1⁄3 scoreless innings with two strikeouts and earned the win. Dedniel Núñez followed with two scoreless innings of his own—a huge bounce back outing for him—earning his second hold of the season. Núñez also pitched 1 1⁄3 innings in Tuesday’s loss and allowed an inherited runner to score on an Austin Riley double. Unfortunately it was two steps forward and one step back for Núñez, who was knocked around for two runs in an inning of work in Sunday’s disastrous game, but the game was already well out of hand by then.
Ryne Stanek pitched a scoreless inning in both Wednesday and Thursday’s victories on his way to a clean sheet for the week. Stanek also pitched a scoreless seventh inning in Monday’s game to keep that one close.
Edwin Díaz also pitched in all three of Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday’s games. Díaz allowed two hits in the ninth on Monday, but no runs to keep the Braves’ lead to just one run. Unfortunately the offense did not have any late-inning heroics in them that night. On Thursday, Díaz completed the shutout of the Braves with a scoreless ninth inning in a non-save situation. On Wednesday, Díaz was forced into service when fresh arm Jonathan Pintaro almost let the game get away. Pintaro was trusted to protect a six run lead and allowed two runs in the ninth, necessitating the use of Díaz to get the final out.
It feels mean to hand Pintaro a poop emoji in his first Mets appearance, but he has plenty of company. The Pirates had a six-run eighth inning on Saturday off Huascar Brazobán and Colin Poche, who join Pintaro in poop emoji territory. Brazobán had another implosion in Tuesday’s game when he walked the bases loaded. All of those runs would eventually come around to score thanks to José Castillo, who failed to record an out. And suddenly the Braves went from three runs down to two runs ahead.
Rounding out the poop emoji brigade is David Peterson, who is pitching his worst innings of the season when the Mets most need him to step up. In Friday’s series opener in Pittsburgh, the Pirates dropped a four spot on Peterson in the second inning. In total, he was charged with five runs over 4 2⁄3 innings. He walked three batters and struck out five. Blade Tidwell pitched the rest of the game and gave up an additional four runs on five hits in the later innings. He struck out a batter and walked two in the outing.
Dicky Lovelady was signed, cut, and then signed again all during the last weeklong period. During that rollercoaster week, the journeyman lefty made two appearances and neither of them went particularly well. In Tuesday’s loss, he gave up two runs in 1 2⁄3 innings. One of those runs was on the Austin Riley RBI double that Dedniel Núñez gave up, charged to Lovelady. Lovelady also gave up two runs in Sunday’s loss, but so did everybody else, including Travis Jankowski.
That leaves Reed Garrett whose week was somewhat of a mixed bag, but an improvement on his poop emoji performance from last week. He pitched a scoreless eighth inning with two strikeouts in Monday’s loss. He then came in the game during the disastrous sixth inning on Tuesday after Castillo could not put the inning to bed and gave up a go-ahead RBI single to Matt Olson. Those runs were charged to Castillo. He then finished off his week with a scoreless seventh inning in Saturday’s game before things snowballed on Brazobán and Poche in the eighth. So Garrett gets a clean sheet for the week, but only two of his three outings were objectively successful.