The long and short of the Mets’ miserable April is that it ended on another loss.
Despite a well-timed 359-foot longball and the desperate use of a couple three-foot sacrifice bunts to jumpstart a futile offense, the Mets couldn’t protect a one-run eighth-inning lead and lost 5-4 in the rubber game of a series Thursday against the Nationals in front 34,621 at Citi Field.
With their three top relievers — a low bar to clear — lined up to protect a 4-3 lead, the Mets still collapsed when Luke Weaver allowed the go-ahead two-run homer to C.J. Abrams in the eighth inning. The Nationals threatened to add insurance in the ninth but Ronny Mauricio cut down a run at the plate and Luis Torrens threw out an attempted base-stealer at second base.
Mauricio struck out to end the game with the tying run in scoring position after Francisco Alvarez’s pinch-hit two-out double.
The Nationals led 3-0 until the top of the Mets’ lineup forged a two-out third-inning rally. MJ Melendez followed back-to-back singles by Bo Bichette and Juan Soto with a two-strike line-drive home run that snuck over the right-field fence before James Wood could stalk it for a hat trick of great catches.
Melendez also supplied the bunt that allowed the Mets to take a brief 4-3 lead. He moved Soto into scoring position for Mark Vientos’ go-ahead RBI double in the sixth.
Playing with a lineup that had six batters with sub-.600 OPS’s at one point during the game, embattled manager Carlos Mendoza tried the sacrifice-bunt strategy again in the seventh to no avail as the Mets wasted Carson Benge’s leadoff single.
But the Mets abandoned bunting in the eighth with Soto at second base after a leadoff double. Instead of calling on Melendez to lay down another sacrifice, Mendoza sent up pinch hitter Austin Slater, whose groundout to shortstop ended up killing a rally.
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The first sign that Thursday was going to be like so many other days that the MLB-worst Mets have had was when Soto’s would-be third home run in as many days was robbed by a glove-behind-the-wall catch by the 6-foot-6 right fielder Wood in the first inning.
The second was when ace Fredy Peralta turned and double play into a two-base error. Had he fielded a comebacker cleanly or let it go past the mound, the Mets would have been out of the second inning in a scoreless tie but instead Nakim Nunez ran 270 feet as Peralta’s errant throw tricked down the right-field line and then crossed the plate with a second run on Jacob Young’s single.
After the Mets tied the score, Peralta retired seven straight hitters until finding himself in a two-on, one-out jam courtesy of two walks in the sixth. But he bore down to retire Jorbit Vivas and Nunez on the final of his 91 pitches without the ball leaving the ball the infield.
Peralta — one earned run on four hits and three walks with six strikeouts mixed in — was in line for the victory after the go-ahead rally, but the Mets don’t win anymore.
