WASHINGTON — The Mets have spent much of the last two months making everybody else look like Max Scherzer. So, when they faced the real thing on Wednesday night, it only followed that their misery would continue.
It has become a matter of natural order, in the same way that the sun rises in the east, and that water is wet. The Mets can’t hit. And unless they find a way to squeeze some life out of an impotent offense, a season of great promise will have fizzled away, more baggage for a fan base that whiles away the bad days by counting its scars.
“We need to win tonight,” manager Terry Collins said, not mincing words before a 4-2 loss to the Nationals.
Nothing in baseball is inevitable, though the final game of this horrid seven-game road trip came close.
James Loney hit a two-run homer in the ninth inning, adding a cosmetic touch-up to an otherwise brutal series for the Mets. Until that swing, they hadn’t scored since the third inning Monday, a span of 23 consecutive innings, an act of remarkable futility made possible only by group incompetence.
Scherzer, who no-hit the Mets last season, dominated again, allowing only two hits and striking out 10 in 7 1⁄3 shutout innings. It was his seventh double-digit strikeout game of the season.
Meanwhile, former Met Daniel Murphy relished in exacting more revenge against the franchise that let him walk in free agency. Murphy swatted two homers, knocking in three runs.
He equaled his career high with 14 homers, which he hit last season while helping the Mets to the pennant. He has four homers against the team that drafted him, developed him, then dumped him.
The Mets (40-37) have dropped six games behind the Nationals in the NL East and now must host the world-beating Cubs in a four-game set starting on Thursday.
Logan Verrett, the Mets’ starter, had been forced into action only by the bothersome bone spur in Steven Matz’s left elbow. Matz will instead pitch in Thursday’s series opener against the juggernaut Cubs, which left Verrett with the task of avoiding a sweep.
Verrett held the Nationals to two runs in five innings, yeoman’s work for a pitcher who began the night with a 5.79 ERA in four previous spot starts this season.
Of course, Verrett’s effort was made irrelevant by Scherzer’s. With a fastball that rippled at 97 mph and knee-buckling offspeed pitches, Scherzer retired 18 in a row in one stretch.
The Mets had a chance to score in the second, putting runners on first and second with just one out. But Brandon Nimmo and Rene Rivera followed with strikeouts.
Scherzer blinked in the eighth, allowing a one-out single to Nimmo before bowing out to a rousing ovation. Reliever Oliver Perez, the former Met, surrendered a pinch-hit single to Curtis Granderson, and for the first time since the seventh inning, the Mets registered a pulse.
It was quickly squashed. Nationals manager Dusty Baker summoned reliever Blake Treinen, who got pinch hitter Travis d’Arnaud to ground out. Baker emerged again, this time to have Shawn Kelly strike out struggling Alejandro De Aza, whose average dropped to .158.
The Mets have yet to reach the halfway point of the season, and that the very nature of baseball’s marathon means that fortunes still can turn. For their warts -- and seemingly all of them have been on display lately -- the Mets began the day with possession of the second wild card spot in the National League.
Even with injuries, they are a deeper and more accomplished team than they were a year ago, when they slogged through another excruciating first half.
Not that any of it makes the Mets’ turbulence any easier to stomach. Perspective, like encouraging words, provide little relief.
“It sounds real trite, but we’ve got to grind this out,” Collins said before even witnessing yet another horror. “We’ve got to get through this tough time.”
..... - Newsday