The Mets may have been bushed from flying to Busch Stadium from Anaheim for their one day stop of a 10-game, four city road trip but they rode Sean Manaea’s second consecutive strong outing to a 6-0 win over the St. Louis Cardinals Monday afternoon.
Last Wednesday, Manaea tossed seven innings of shutout ball against the Minnesota Twins at Citifield. Six days later, different venue, same result. The left hander gave up six hits with no walks and 10 strikeouts. In his last two starts, Manaea, who is turning into one of the best free agent signings, has tossed 14 shutout innings, while giving up eight hits with one walk and 21 strikeouts.
“What an outing. Now back to back, the way he dominated a pretty good lineup there. Complete control of the game. The fastball, the sweeper, he’s attacking hitters, getting ahead, putting them away, making pitches when he needed to,” Mets Manager Carlos Mendoza said.
After dropping two of three to the Angels, the Mets flew from Anaheim to St. Louis for a make up game that preceeded a trip to Colorado and then back to Seattle.
“We knew we were going to be facing this type of challenges but at the end of the day, they’re big league players, we’re a big league team and our job is to continue to win baseball games, regardless of the circumstances,” Mendoza said.
Manaea (8-4) had to work a little harder in this one but made the big pitches when he really needed them.
After setting the Cardinals down in order in the first, Nolan Arenado lined a one out double to the left field corner, but Manaea got Alec Burleson on a fly out to center and then struck out Brendan Donovan to end the threat.
The Cardinals had two on with two out in the third but Manaea stranded those runners when he struck out Willson Contreras. Again in the fourth, Manaea struck out Cardinals catcher Pedro Pages with two men on.
“Just confidence in my fastball and slider and, like I said, try to get ahead of guys, finish off when I can and just using those strengths,” Manaea said.
The Mets left hander got stronger as the game wore on as he faced only seven batters over his final two innings with only Victor Scott II reaching on a rare error by Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor in the seventh. Manaea picked up his teammate by getting Mason Wynn on a fly out to Brandon Nimmo in left.
The Mets got on the board in the second and took a 1-0 lead when Pete Alonso scored from third on a wild pitch by Cardinals starter and loser Andre Pallante.
The Mets broke the game open in the fifth with some big hits that they were missing in California that led to a four run rally.
With one out, Jeff McNeil and Francisco Alvarez singled. Harrison Bader, who received a standing ovation from the Cardinal fans earlier in the game, doubled down the left field line to score McNeil with the second run as Alvarez took third. Lindor walked to load the bases and Tyrone Taylor, who was penciled into the second spot in the batting order, came through with a bases clearing double on a 1-2 pitch to give the Mets a 5-0 lead.
“I’d already hit a couple of ground balls to third base, one on a sinker, the other one a slider,” Taylor said. “I knew I had Nimmo hitting behind me, a really good hitter so I was just really trying to put a ball in the air.”
“Bases loaded there with two strikes I think it was. Stayed with his approach, don’t try to do too much and going the other way, yeah, huge hit, we needed that,” Mendoza said.
In the sixth, McNeil hit a solo homerun off of newly acquired reliever Shawn Armstrong to cap off the scoring. The bottom third of the order (McNeil, Alvarez and Bader) accounted for six of the Mets’ nine hits, four runs scored two runs batted in.
On June 8th, Manaea had just lost to the Phillies to drop to 3-3 with a 4.30 ERA. Since that time, he’s 5-1 and he has shaved a full run off of his ERA that is now at 3.30.
A one day visit to St. Louis turned into a big win for the Mets who evened their record at 2-2 with two more stops to go on this big road trip.
“Something like this, we have a tough August, it’s awesome. We’re excited to just play our game, get closer together as a locker room and just go out there and put a winning product out there, regardless of the circumstances,’ Bader said. “I guess we’re kinda of in the middle of it now, obviously [we’re] in the early days of August but we know what’s in front of us and I think we’re all doing a really good job of getting our rest, keeping our minds focused and coming out and playing our brand of winning baseball.”
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