The New York Mets have been in a tailspin the last week and Thursday afternoon's loss to the last-place Miami Marlins (MIA 4, NYM 2) may have been rock bottom. The Mets went 4 for 13 (.308) with runners in scoring position, but two of the hits didn't score runs and another didn't even leave the infield. New York left 15 (!) runners on base in nine innings.
The biggest culprit in Thursday's RISPFAIL: Javier Báez. The club's marquee trade deadline addition went 0 for 5 with five strikeouts. He struck out with the bases loaded in the first, leading off the fourth, with runners on first and second in the fifth, with a runner on first in the seventh, and with runners on first and second in the ninth. Five strikeouts and eight left on base. Ouch.
The five-strikeout game is the third of Báez's career. He also did it while with the Cubs on July 25, 2017, and May 27, 2019. He is the first Mets player with five strikeouts in a game since Ryan Thompson on Sept. 29, 1993, and the first Mets player to strike out five times in only five at-bats since Dave Kingman on May 28, 1982.
Baez went deep in his first game with the Mets over the weekend. Since then, he's gone 3 for 18 (.167) with eight strikeouts in five games. Báez did hit what proved to be the game-winning home run in the eighth inning Wednesday, however.
It was not only Báez who came up short in key situations Thursday. The Mets loaded the bases with no outs in the first inning and failed to score, then loaded the bases again in the ninth inning, and pushed across just one run on an infield single. Going into Thursday's game, the Mets ranked 18th among the 30 teams with a .248 batting average with runners in scoring position.
"It's really tough to explain. I just think that we've missed our pitches and we've chased [their pitches]," Mets manager Luis Rojas said when asked about leaving so many runners on base following Thursday's game (video). "We saw it again today when we had the bases loaded and no outs in the first. There were some fastballs thrown by us. I'm not talking about one batter, I'm talking about a lot of our hitters."
Thursday's loss was New York's fourth in the last five games -- they lost three of four to the Marlins this week -- and their 12th in 21 games since the All-Star break. Their NL East little has dwindled from 3 1/2 games to one game during that time, and could shrink to a half-game should the Phillies beat the Nationals on Thursday (GameTracker).
The Mets and Phillies will play three games at Citizens Bank Park this weekend and that series suddenly has enormous postseason implications. The NL West is too good to rely on the wild card as a fallback plan, so in all likelihood, it will be NL East title or no postseason for the Mets and Phillies.
Javier Báez strikes out five times as Mets' NL East lead takes another hit with loss to Marlins - CBS Sports
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