During the Mets recent cold stretch, manager Luis Rojas has spoken about how the team’s inability to hit opposing pitchers’ fastballs has been slowing them as an offense.
And that was once again the case in Saturday’s 5-3 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies, a defeat that dropped the Mets 1.5 games out of first place in the division.
While the offense was anemic for most of the day, entering the ninth inning with only two hits, the bats came alive in the ninth as Michael Conforto, Jonathan Villar and James McCann went back-to-back-to-back to make things interesting. Kevin Pillar and Brandon Nimmo then reached against Ian Kennedy to put the go-ahead runs on base, but Pete Alonso and JD Davis both went down on strikes And both on fastballs, to be more exact.
“Well placed up in the zone and Ian Kennedy’s a guy who has good carry on his fastball, he’s known for that,” Rojas said afterwards. “He’s throwing it eight out of 10 times. Batters know it’s coming but still the carry and the movement that he has vertically gives him the ability to get swings and misses.”
And it wasn’t just against Kennedy. Whether it was Phillies’ starter Ranger Suarez or even JD Hammer in middle relief, the Mets were just not catching up to the Phillies’ fastballs.
“I still think, not only there at the end of the game but throughout the game, we had a bunch of swings and misses on fastballs,” Rojas said. “And I know I’ve been saying about our mentality about hitting fastballs. It’s good to see the guys earlier that inning attack some fastballs like they did, hitting the homers. That’s what we want to do. I think that if we show that we can catch up with fastballs, we can play with that, we can go off of that.
“Once again we showed tonight offensively that we can get beat with that pitch. That’s where I’m coming from. That’s a pitch that we have to be ready for all the time.”
The Mets will look to break out of this skid, in which they’ve lost eight of 10, on Sunday afternoon, when they face another fastball-heavy pitcher in old friend Zack Wheeler.
Rojas knows the Mets will need to figure out the fastball sooner rather than later.
“It could be a timing thing,” he said. “All that information about pitchers is given here, video, all those things. I think the timing being earlier and just catching the fastball out front is probably what we’re lacking right now, and it’s important that we’re consistently doing that.
“I think we’re just being inconsistent with that issue, catching the fastball out in front like we should.”