![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775198778_96_image.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nSAN FRANCISCO \u2014 The Mets have a new buzzword for this season. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s called win prevention. <\/p>\n
Try as they might, Carlos Mendoza & Co. just can\u2019t get their act together in any consistent fashion, and on Thursday night, the pitching staff could be counted among the co-conspirators in a 7-2 loss to the Giants at Oracle Park. <\/p>\n
Rest assured, the offense didn\u2019t do much either, as the Mets ran their total output to 14 runs in the past six games. Bo Bichette collected his first extra-base hit as a Met (RBI double) and Mark Vientos smacked his first homer, but David Peterson couldn\u2019t contain the Giants in his 4\u00a01\u20443 innings. He allowed nine hits and six runs, one of which was unearned, thanks to his own error in the first inning. <\/p>\n
The Mets did so little offensively that they were a mere 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position and are 1-for-32 in their last four games. <\/p>\n
Overall, the Mets are hitting .155 (11-for-71) with runners in scoring position, which ranks 29th in the majors, ahead of only the Reds (.152). They lead MLB with 59 stranded runners. <\/p>\n
Are they under a magnifying glass this early in the season? <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people are looking at everything, every day, throughout the whole season,\u201d Bichette said. \u201cSome years you get off to a good start, some years you don\u2019t. Just part of it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Are they hitting in bad luck as a group? \u201cMaybe, but that\u2019s not something to fall back on,\u201d Bichette said. \u201cYou should always be looking to do better, be better. So that\u2019s what we\u2019ll do. And good thing about baseball, you get to show up and do it again tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Mets (3-4) have lost four of their last five games and are the only team in the NL East currently below .500. They\u2019re 2\u00a01\u20442 games behind the division-leading Marlins, who have MLB\u2019s lowest payroll at $84 million. <\/p>\n
The Mets\u2019 rotation carried a 3.06 ERA into Thursday night\u2019s game, the sixth-best in the majors and one of the few things keeping them afloat through the first week. But the Giants barreled up Peterson all night \u2014 their average exit velocity was 93.9 mph \u2014 and Sean Manaea continued to labor out of the bullpen (one run, four hits, 3\u00a02\u20443 innings). <\/p>\n
Peterson repeatedly was a pitch away from having the game blown wide open, but when he exited with the Mets in a 5-2 hole, Manaea let the Giants tack on a few insurance runs. Casey Schmitt added a two-out RBI single in the fifth and Rafael Devers led off the sixth with a 404-foot homer. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey had a good plan and they executed it,\u201d Carlos Mendoza said. \u201cIt looked like they forced him up in the zone and they were super-aggressive, especially early in counts, and they made solid contact there.\u201d <\/p>\n
Said Peterson: \u201cI think early in the game, there were pitches that I was trying to get down in the zone and I left them up. And they were able to take advantage.\u201d <\/p>\n
There were a few ugly defensive moments as well. Peterson\u2019s error led to an unearned run in the first inning when he fumbled a flip from Vientos on what should have been the third out. In the second, Marcus Semien \u2014 who has struggled in every way imaginable \u2014 ranged into shallow centerfield, only to botch Schmitt\u2019s pop-up rather than just let the charging Luis Robert Jr. reel it in. The play was ruled a hit but should have been an out. <\/p>\n
On Thursday night, the Mets added run prevention to their growing list of problems, and it was a system-wide failure early on. Despite renovating the team\u2019s defense and upgrading the rotation, Stearns\u2019 offseason mantra showed some cracks for really the first time. <\/p>\n
The Mets actually took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on Bichette\u2019s RBI double. <\/p>\n
Peterson quickly gave up the lead in the bottom half as the Giants scored three runs, all with two outs. Luis Arraez knocked in the first by smacking a triple high off the brick archway in rightfield and Matt Chapman followed with an RBI double. Just when it looked as if Vientos would save him from further damage with a nifty diving stop of Jung Hoo Lee\u2019s grounder, Peterson fumbled his toss en route to the bag, allowing Chapman to score from second. <\/p>\n
Vientos led off the second with a 406-foot shot over the leftfield wall.\u00a0Perhaps venting some of his team\u2019s recent frustration, Vientos let loose with a monster bat flip as he passed in front of the Mets\u2019 dugout. <\/p>\n
\u00a0Bichette came within a few inches of a tying homer in the third but was robbed by former Met Harrison Bader, who reached above the centerfield wall to snatch his 390-foot rainbow. <\/p>\n
Disaster soon followed in the bottom half as the Giants opened with three straight singles, including a 30-foot roller by Chapman. Lee and Bader hit back-to-back sacrifice flies to put the Giants up 5-2, but Peterson kept the game from getting completely out of hand by striking out Willy Adames with the bases loaded. <\/p>\n
Schmitt\u2019s two-out RBI single off Manaea produced another run charged to Peterson. <\/p>\n
To add insult to injury, Blade Tidwell \u2014 the former Mets prospect traded for reliever Tyler Rogers last July in the deadline deal \u2014 pitched three scoreless innings for the save in his Giants debut. Tidwell allowed two hits and struck out two, including\u00a0Vientos for the final out. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tDavid Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball’s Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 The Mets have a new buzzword for this season. It\u2019s called win prevention. Try as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2396],"tags":[5,15605,101,4,1690,61,2548,4203],"class_list":{"0":"post-660418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-mets","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-gamer","10":"tag-mets","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-mets","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkmets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116339435393655422","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}