In a game the Mets needed to win on Saturday night, the team was shut out, 6-0, managing just two hits against the Milwaukee Brewers’ collection of pitchers.
The offense looked tight all night long and couldn’t make anything happen when they had opportunities, going 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position. Pete Alonso credited the Brewers’ pitching, but knows the team needs to turn things around fast if they want to make the postseason.
“I’m not necessarily worried about it, we just played two good teams and just haven’t played our best baseball,” Alonso said. “Can’t win a game with two hits. They pitched really well today. Offense, we didn’t do our part.”
He added: “It’s not getting it right or wrong. We just need to flat-out execute. We had opportunities to manufacture runs. We had guys one second with less than two outs and didn’t capitalize on that… We’re in the big leagues, we’re going to face good pitching every single day. Tomorrow we just have to do a better job of figuring out a way to do it.”
It’s poor timing for New York’s bats to go cold, as they’ve now dropped three straight games and sit in the third NL Wild Card spot, a game back of the Atlanta Braves for the two-spot. Although, their magic number is down to two games with the Arizona Diamondbacks losing on Saturday night. The Mets could clinch a playoff spot Sunday if they beat the Brewers and the Diamondbacks lose.
“We just need to be better. Had good at-bats but today our effort wasn’t good enough,” Alonso said. “Thankfully we have tomorrow and two more games in Atlanta. It’s a really short runway and we have three games and three games are opportunities for us. For us to get where we need to go, we need to capitalize on opportunities.”
When asked about the team’s losing streak happening at this point in the season, Alonso said that’s just part of the game and that they need to forget Saturday’s loss and turn their full focus on Sunday’s game.
“It’s baseball. It’s never a good time during the season but if you look at the big picture we’ve played great baseball,” Alonso said. “We just need to flush today and move forward and focus on tomorrow. Tomorrow is a big one.”
Brandon Nimmo agreed, saying that offensive struggles can happen at any point in the season, but added the team needs to have confidence in the preparation that’s gotten them this far to turn it back around.
“You hate for [offensive struggles] to happen right now when you really feel you’re at the end of the season and you don’t have any more time,” Nimmo said. “Baseball doesn’t care. It just happens sometimes. It can happen in the middle of June and it can happen right at the end of September. I thought we did a good job yesterday of fighting and putting up runs.
“Sometimes days like these can happen. It’s unfortunate that it’s happening now. All you can do is pick it up, shoot your shots the next day and hope it turns around. You put in your preparation and just send it.”
Nimmo reiterated the Mets need to have a “short-term memory” heading into Sunday’s must-win game, and believes if they can do that, things will go their way.
“Just continue to do your preparation and have a plan when you go up there and send it. We’ve had to play incredible baseball to even be in this position with the way we started. I don’t think guys need to do anything different. Nothing different is going to change anything, that’s an unknown outcome. Everything we’ve done up to this point, that’s produced really good baseball over the last four months. They should continue doing what they’re doing and what’s gotten them there.”
