When pressure and, now, injuries begin mounting and the hits are not, there is a tendency for players to try to do too much.
Maybe that is why the at-bats for the Mets seemed to grow progressively worse Friday night as the booing from the Citi Field crowd grew progressively louder.
Maybe that is the explanation for Francisco Lindor short-circuiting a potential rally, wandering too far off third base and getting gunned down from across the diamond.
The Mets offense was silent, and the jeers became loud in a 4-0 series-opening loss to the Athletics in front of 36,349 unhappy customers as just about everything went wrong, including starting pitcher Clay Holmes leaving with a tight hamstring.
The most wrong, though, was an offense that scored in Thursday’s first inning when Luis Robert Jr. homered but since that blast has gone 17 consecutive innings without a run. It is difficult to win when a team cannot score, and the Mets (7-7) have dropped three straight.
“Couple of guys going through it,” manager Carlos Mendoza said after the Mets were shut out for a second time this season. “When you got a few guys that are having a hard time, we’re not creating traffic. … Right now, it’s just quick innings.”
They did not get a hit against the A’s — who two-hit the Yankees over the final 17 innings of a series in The Bronx that ended Thursday — until Jared Young laid down a bunt that somehow stayed fair with one out in the fourth.
Young was the last position player to crack the roster coming out of spring training yet was the club’s No. 3 hitter. He is off to a nice start, so the slot was understandable, but it underscored how feeble the Mets order has looked.
There is no Juan Soto, who is not yet running and is likely weeks away from a return. It is possible the rest of the order — which finished with six hits, not a single Met with more than one — is trying to do too much without its best hitter.
“Soto is irreplaceable. He’s one of the best hitters in the game,” Lindor said. “Guys understand that we got to get it done. We’re all professionals, and we have to get it done.”
Lindor has to get it done, he acknowledged, but this is turning into yet another April in which he gets off to a slow start. Through 14 games, he is 9-for-55 (.164) without a home run. Even a rare hit Friday ended up leading to a different kind of mistake.
Down a run, the Mets began a rally in the sixth inning against righty reliever Jack Perkins. Lindor singled and went to third on a single from Bo Bichette.
There was life injected into Queens. An instant later, it was gone.
Young grounded to Nick Kurtz, and Lindor attempted — successfully — to draw a throw from the first baseman.
“That’s the right play,” Mendoza maintained.
“We definitely wanted to stay out of a double play in that situation,” Lindor said.
The merits of the play are debatable, but the execution lacked. Ideally, Lindor would have wandered far enough off the base to draw a throw and either return to the base safely or induce a rundown, which would allow the trail runners to move to second and third.
Instead, Kurtz eyed Lindor, hesitated a moment and then threw a strike to nail Lindor before he could return to the base. Three pitches later, Robert grounded into a double play, which jump-started rounds of boos that became the soundtrack for the late innings.
“I could have done a better job of holding [out for] the rundown,” said Lindor, whose bigger issues reside with his bat than legs.
He continues to state that the spring surgery on his hamate — which notoriously saps power from hitters — is not a factor.
What he does believe is a factor is a tendency of late to swing at pitches outside the strike zone.
“I got to get better,” Lindor said. “At the beginning of the year, I was doing a really good job of controlling the strike zone. Now, I’m expanding a little bit.”
Adding to the insulting offense was the Holmes injury, which was not immediately believed to be serious. The righty exited in the sixth with what the club called left hamstring tightness after allowing one run in 5 ¹/₃ innings.
Tobias Myers entered and pitched well until he let up three runs in the top of the ninth, but pitching became a Mets afterthought Friday.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
