ATLANTA – By the time Justin Hagenman came in during the sixth inning of their 7-1 loss to Atlanta at Truist Park Thursday night, the Mets had somewhat astoundingly uncovered two more pitching concerns in the few short hours since they’d announced that reliever Max Kranick was heading to the 15-day injured list with an elbow strain.
1. Hagenman, who was called up for Kranick, is no longer an option to start against the Phillies on Friday, and the Mets will instead recall Blade Tidwell, who made his major-league debut earlier this year and allowed nine runs, six earned, in 3 2/3 innings.
2. Clay Holmes and Huascar Brazoban – two of the reliable arms in what’s become an increasingly volatile group – completely lost sight of the strike zone, combining to walk nine batters over 5 1/3 innings, including two with the bases loaded.
So ended the Mets’ nightmare trip to Atlanta: They were dealt their second sweep in a row, extended their losing streak to six games, fell into a tie with the Phillies for first place in the NL East, and lost both Kranick to a right elbow strain (he got an MRI Thursday afternoon to assess the extent of the damage) and starter Tylor Megill Tuesday to an elbow sprain.
They’ve scored one run over the last 23 innings, and that came in the second inning Thursday, when Tyrone Taylor singled, stole second, and took off on contact to score on Ronny Mauricio’s single. Spencer Strider allowed that run on three hits with a walk and eight strikeouts over six innings.
The rest was all Atlanta. Holmes, who is at a career-high 82 innings and was limited to 79 pitches in his last start after experiencing fatigue after an outing in Colorado, allowed three runs on four hits with five strikeouts and a career-high six walks.
“I didn’t execute really when I needed to there at the end,” Holmes said. “It’s hard to overcome that many walks. I felt like the stuff felt pretty good tonight and I felt like it was just a matter of executing some of the secondaries in the zone – not enough strikes with those and got in a lot of deep counts.”
Atlanta tied the game at 1 in the fourth when Holmes issued a leadoff walk to Matt Olson, a single to Marcell Ozuna, and a one-out, run-scoring single to Ozzie Albies.
The wildness truly kicked in in the fifth: Holmes walked Ronald Acuna Jr. to lead off the inning, let up a one-out single to Austin Riley, then walked Olson on five pitches to load the bases. Ozuna struck out looking, but after going up 1-and-2 on Drake Baldwin, the catcher worked the count full and then took a sinker down low to walk in a run and give Atlanta the lead. That brought in Huascar Brazoban, who walked Albies on four straight balls to make it 3-1.
Atlanta added four more in the sixth. Brazoban loaded the bases with one out and Olson lined a double to right to clear them. That brought in Hagenman, who let up an RBI single to Baldwin to make it 7-1.
“It’s the starting pitching right now,” Mendoza said. “They’ve been so good the whole year and they pretty much carried us all the way to this point. You lose a couple of guys that were consistently throwing the ball well and some other guys have a couple of bad outings. It happens.”
All of it paints a portrait of a pitching staff in chaos.
They lost Kodai Senga to a hamstring strain last week, and he, like Megill, will be out for at least four more weeks. Despite six frightful rehab starts where he pitched to a 12.05 ERA, Frankie Montas (lat) will be slotted into the rotation sometime next week when Atlanta comes to Citi Field, Mendoza said.
“Look, we need starters here,” Mendoza said. “We signed him to be a starter for this team and we’re going to give him a chance…He got hit around, but we’ve seen it before where guys in spring training struggle and they get hit around and once you put them in a big-league game under the lights and you game plan and you make adjustments, they flip the switch.”
Senga’s fill in, Paul Blackburn, struggled Wednesday, Sean Manaea (oblique) probably is still about two weeks away from return, and Griffin Canning has a 6.08 ERA in his last six starts. They’ve also used seven relievers over the last three days, and enter Game 4 of a 13-game stretch.
“There’s no question you lose part of your identity as a team” when you lose so many pitchers, Brandon Nimmo said. “But I can’t say we’re the only team that’s experienced that…You still have to go out and find ways to win, but it does hurt.”
It hurts literally and figuratively, and now, the former best team in baseball will have to find a way to bandage the bleeding.
Notes and quotes. Brett Baty missed a third straight game after injuring his groin Sunday but said he was feeling better, sprinting and doing change direction drills…Juan Soto collected the 1,000th hit of his career, a first-inning single off Strider…The Mets recalled right-handed reliever Dedniel Nunez and demoted Ty Adcock to Triple-A Syracuse.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
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