Cubs 3
Mets 0
CHICAGO – As he rubbed his sore left elbow, Mike Cameron admitted it hurt when Kerry Wood hit him with a pitch yesterday. But the Met center fielder wasn’t about to complain.
“We have enough problems as it is,” Cameron said, “for me to be worried about getting hit in the elbow.”
Cameron couldn’t be more right. After two days in Wrigley, the Mets have more losses (two) than runs (one). The latest setback came when they mustered just four hits, all singles, in yesterday’s 3-0 shutout to Wood and company. It’s the Mets’ seventh loss in their last nine games.
The Mets (7-11) weren’t hitting against Pittsburgh and Montreal, but against the Cubs – who own perhaps the sport’s top staff – things have been even worse. In two games, the Mets have struck out 23 times and are a combined 2-for-24 with runners on base.
More? After the third inning yesterday, they managed to hit just one ball out of the infield.
“The good news is, it can’t go on forever,” Cameron said. “It just can’t.”
It seems like it already has. In the last 50 innings, the Mets have scored more than one run in an inning exactly one time. They have scored 12 runs in their last eight games, tallying one run or fewer in six of them.
“We’re trying to do as much as we can to get out of this funk,” Karim Garcia said, “but it’s just not happening right now.”
Art Howe noted that every team goes through this kind of spurt, and because it’s early in the season, he said, “I think everybody blows it out of proportion.”
Still, desperate to find something to spark his slumping club, the manager mixed up his lineup for the fifth straight day. Howe placed Piazza in the three-hole and batted the scorching-hot Shane Spencer cleanup. He also inserted Vance Wilson and Joe McEwing, who entered a combined 7-for-13 lifetime against Wood.
None of it mattered as Wood out-dueled another young power arm, Tyler Yates, and continued to prove why he might be the NL’s best pitcher. The fireballing right-hander hurled seven shutout frames, walking two and striking out nine.
More impressive than Wood’s line, though, was his dominance. Mixing in 76-mph curves that swept over the plate with pure 98-mph gas, Wood was barely touched. The Mets put a runner on third just once and seldom hit the ball hard. As for Wilson and McEwing, they combined for four strikeouts in six at-bats.
Before the start, Yates had been excited to oppose Wood, a pitcher he used to follow while coming up through the minors. But perhaps lost in the euphoria was that Yates would also have to face Sammy Sosa for the first time ever. It didn’t exactly go well.
In the first inning, Yates tried to fire an up-and-in fastball to Sosa but “threw it in a bad spot,” leaving it on the inner third of the plate. Sosa promptly introduced himself by blasting a solo homer to left-center, putting the Mets in an early 1-0 hole.
Yates pitched fairly well overall, surrendering three runs in five innings. But the Mets can’t hit, and they can’t score. The funk continues.
