PHILADELPHIA – Mike Piazza can’t do it all, but sometimes you get the feeling his team waits for him to.
Piazza mashed three-run homers in the sixth and seventh innings, and each time Met pitchers destroyed a lead. Piazza’s homers – his 16th and 17th of the season – came on a 96-degree night, but even Piazza’s scintillating bat couldn’t prevent a disastrous 8-7 loss to the Phillies lowlighted by an inconsistent bullpen.
Closer Jose Mesa struck out Piazza on a 95-mile-per-hour cutter to end the game with the tying run on first, earning his 22nd save by coming back from a 3-and-0 count.
“I’m trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark there,” said Piazza, who must feel like he needs to go deep every time up these days.
Plagued by chronic inconsistency, the Mets (41-42) lost their third straight series. After Jeff D’Amico squandered a 4-1 lead without recording an out in the sixth, relievers David Weathers, Jaime Cerda and Scott Strickland were all tagged for runs later in the night.
“Those guys have pitched great all year,” D’Amico said. “Right now I’m not helping the cause.
“I should’ve gotten out of the sixth. Those guys are taking a beating down there.”
Strickland (6-5) took the loss after allowing a two-out double to Ricky Ledee in the eighth, and Mark Guthrie’s first pitch resulted in the go-ahead RBI single to center by All-Star shortstop Jimmy Rollins.
“Mark came in and threw a great pitch that was hit off the end of the bat for a hit up the middle,” Bobby Valentine said.
Explanations and excuses are plentiful around the fourth-place Mets (who are 11 ½ games behind Atlanta again), but the bottom line is failure.
Everybody knows it shouldn’t have taken 83 games for Piazza and Mo Vaughn to hit back-to-back homers. Their consecutive blasts off Phillies starter Randy Wolf with one out in the sixth gave the Mets a 4-1 edge.
Then the pitching caved in, like everybody thought it would back in the winter. Philadelphia batted around during a five-run sixth and was buoyed by back-to-back jacks from Bobby Abreu (two-run) and Pat Burrell (solo) that tied the game and chased D’Amico.
To top it off, the oft-injured righty shook off Piazza twice when the All-Star catcher called curveballs to both sluggers. Both gopher balls were 85-mph fastballs D’Amico tried to sneak inside.
“It’s a matter of not trusting myself and not trusting Mike as well,” D’Amico said. “He knows what’s going on.”
Philly went ahead 6-4 against Weathers on an RBI double by Marlon Anderson that hit inside the third-base line and ricocheted off the jutted-out stands. A multi-hopper up the middle by pinch-hitter Doug Glanville resulted in an RBI single.
“It’s something you don’t want to get into – good hitting with bad pitching, or good pitching with bad hitting,” Weathers said. “That’s when your boat is really sunk.”
———-
HEATING UP?
PER GAME // AB // R // H // HR // RBI // TB // AVG // SLG
LAST 6 // 36.7 // 6.3 // 9.7 // 1.7 // 6.0 // 16.8 // .263 // .459
FIRST 77 // 33.9 // 4.0 // 8.4 // 0.8 // 3.7 // 12.6 // .247 // .371
