A’s 3 – Mets 2
OAKLAND – Four nights earlier, the Mets had experienced the thrill of a walk-off hit.
Last night, they got the other end of it.
Former Met Marco Scutaro drilled a game-winning walk-off RBI single with two outs in the ninth inning off Roberto Hernandez as the A’s beat the Mets, 3-2.
The Mets have now lost three straight and are 0-2 on their 12-game road trip, their longest of the season. They’ve dropped six of their last seven and must win this afternoon to avoid getting swept by the last-place A’s.
They remain alone in last place in the NL East, 6 ½ games behind the Nationals.
As concerned as they are, players are trying to keep the slump in perspective.
“You can’t scoreboard-watch in June or you’ll lose your mind,” first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz said after last night’s loss.
The Mets continued their horrendous offensive struggles last night, scoring just the two runs and managing just five hits. Over their last seven games, they’ve scored a pitiful 16 runs in 66 innings.
The Mets went 1-for-7 with men on base and with men in scoring position last night. In their seven-game funk, they’ve gone 15-for-82 (.183) with men on base and 9-for-54 (.167) with runners in scoring position.
With the game tied 2-2 in the ninth, Royce Ring began the inning for the Mets. Ring had done a fine job in the eighth, coming in to strike out lefty cleanup hitter Eric Chavez with two men on, and it made sense for him to start the ninth since lefty Dan Johnson was due up for Oakland.
But the A’s pinch-hit switch hitter Bobby Kielty instead, and Willie Randolph left Ring in. The reliever walked Kielty, and Randolph brought in Hernandez.
Keith Ginter bunted Kielty to second, but with lefty pinch hitter Scott Hatteberg up, the Mets chose to intentionally walk him, putting runners on first and second for switch-hitting Nick Swisher. Scutaro slammed the first pitch from Hernandez into the left-center-field gap to end the game.
“I just left the ball up in the zone,” Hernandez said.
On Saturday night, the Mets had won in dramatic fashion when Cliff Floyd ripped a walk-off three-run homer in the 10th inning.
After getting shut out on Tuesday, the Mets were blanked over the first six innings last night, extending their scoreless streak to an incredible 20 innings. They finally broke through in the seventh last night.
Trailing 2-0 against Oakland righty Dan Haren, David Wright led off with a double to left and Doug Mientkiewicz followed by doubling him home. Mientkiewicz went to third on Victor Diaz’s fly ball to right and scored the tying run on Jose Reyes’ sac fly.
Prior to that seventh inning, the last time the Mets had scored, or even gotten a hit with a runner in scoring position, was in the fourth inning on Sunday against the Angels when Pedro Martinez singled in Mientkiewicz. The Mets went hitless in their next 10 at-bats with runners on second or third.
“Right now, I think nothing’s working for us,” Carlos Beltran said. “The pitchers are doing good, but offensively . . . we should be doing better than this.”
The Mets did get a stellar effort from pitcher Victor Zambrano, who permitted just two runs on five hits in 7 2/3 innings and is actually pitching extremely well right now. In his last six starts, Zambrano has posted a 2.84 ERA, though he has only one win to show for it.
The game was scoreless into the sixth, when Zambrano walked Scutaro and one out later, had a Mark Kotsay smash back to the mound hit off what looked like his right thigh. Zambrano recovered to get Kotsay at first, but now Scutaro was at second with two outs.
Bobby Crosby followed by hitting a blooper to left that Floyd dived for but could only short-hop, and Scutaro scored to make it 1-0. Chavez then made it 2-0 with an RBI triple to right.
