After Armando Benitez couldn’t save a game, John Thomson had a chance to salvage the day.
Had Thomson woven a masterpiece in last night’s doubleheader nightcap after Benitez blew a one-run lead in the ninth inning of the opener, he could’ve made his Met debut a memorable one. Instead the day was downright excruciating.
Baseball is about memories, and the 49,384 fans at Shea are unlikely to forget Arizona’s doubleheader sweep that put a dent in the Mets’ postseason hopes.
“We just didn’t finish it. In turn, we got knocked around in Game 2,” Mo Vaughn said. “Tomorrow’s a must-win. We’ve got to get a win and rectify the situation.”
The Diamondbacks won the opener, 8-5, in 10 innings after pinch-hitter Craig Counsell tied the game with a homer leading off the ninth against Benitez.
Scott Strickland followed Benitez by serving up Erubiel Durazo’s second homer of the game, a three-run jack to center.
Thomson buckled in the nightcap by surrendering four unearned runs in the third inning and a three-run bomb to Jay Bell in the fifth. Thomson’s team looked lifeless and was destroyed, 9-2.
“I was probably a little bit overanxious, I guess, to go out and do well,” Thomson said.
The Mets (55-54) have lost three straight and four of their last five, and now trail the Dodgers by 5½ games in the wild-card.
For a moment, the day looked hopeful. In the eighth inning of the opener, Edgardo Alfonzo’s two-run homer off reliever Mike Myers gave the Mets a 5-4 lead at a time when Los Angeles was trailing Philadelphia. That was before L.A. came back and Benitez blew his third save in 29 opportunities.
“He’s been near-perfect and he gave up a home run,” Bobby Valentine said. “I’ve seen everyone do it this week, so it must be that time of the year. No one is perfect.”
It was the third time in his last four outings that Benitez served up a gopher ball. The light-hitting, but clutch, Counsell hit what Valentine admitted was “a fat pitch” on a full count, pulling the ball down the line and against the black backdrop in the right-field corner to tie the game at 5-5.
“He hit a good pitch, made a good swing,” Benitez said. “At that point, I was behind and I had to throw a strike.
“I don’t have any excuse. He beat me.”
Strickland (6-7), whose promising Met career is in the gutter, hit Junior Spivey on a 1-2 pitch to lead off the 10th. Luis Gonzalez, who had tied the game at 3-3 in the sixth with a two-run shot off Met starter Steve Trachsel, followed with a single.
Durazo then parked a 93-mile-per-hour fastball from Strickland over the fence in center. Byung-Hyun Kim (5-2) earned the victory with two scoreless innings.
“It’s disappointing,” Trachsel said. “We got clutch hits and they got clutch hits, but they got one more clutch hit than we did.”
Thomson’s first start as a Met was in an atmosphere resembling a semipro game. Most of the crowd left after the disastrous opener.
A leadoff walk to fellow starter Miguel Batista (6-7) in the third, a fielding error by Thomson on a sacrifice and an error on a fly ball to Jeromy Burnitz led to four unearned runs. Thomson (7-9) inflamed his ERA in the fifth when the reed-thin Bell took him deep into the left-field bleachers.
But the fans were tougher on Burnitz, who was continuously booed during an 0-for-8 day. He struck out three times in the finale and was pulled in the eighth.
“It’s pretty rough to take,” Valentine said. “If he deserves it, he deserves it. It’s still pretty rough.”
