SAN FRANCISCO — The cavalry came in the form of a slugger determined to disprove the notion that a golf round sent him to the disabled list, and a shortstop who joked that the Florida sun had dyed his hair platinum blond.
“We’re going to look different here in the next couple of days,” manager Terry Collins said, only to have his optimism tempered in the Mets’ 8-1 loss to the Giants.
When Yoenis Cespedes and Asdrubal Cabrera arrived in the clubhouse Friday, the Mets regained a pair of stalwarts. But it turned out that misery got more company.
Cespedes finished 1-for-4, with his only hit coming with the Mets down big in the ninth. Cabrera lost an easy pop-up and made a costly throwing error. And the Mets continued their crash landing into irrelevance.
They have dropped four of five on their road trip, dipped to two games below the .500 mark (60-62), and tumbled to 5 1⁄2 games back of the Cardinals for the final wild-card spot.
Rookie Seth Lugo defied expectations, allowing three runs in 6 2⁄3 innings when pressed into a spot start because of Steven Matz’s shoulder injury. He was pulled after 69 pitches, with Collins content that he’d gotten all he could ask from the righty making his first big-league start.
The move backfired. Jerry Blevins inherited a pair of Lugo’s baserunners and allowed both to score. Ehire Adrianza delivered a pinch-hit single to give the Giants the lead and Denard Span followed with a single for an insurance run.
The Giants ripped apart the Mets’ bullpen, tacking on five more runs in the eighth with the help of Cabrera’s throwing error to cap off the humiliation. By then, the Mets had long blown their best chances to sway the outcome.
Carelessness on the bases snuffed out a rally in the fifth. And in the eighth, with two runners on, Jay Bruce bounced into a double play to continue his slide since joining the Mets at the trade deadline. Brought in to be a run producer, Bruce entered play hitting just .188 since his arrival from the Reds.
The Mets got a solo shot from Curtis Granderson, a second inning blast that splashed into the waters of McCovey Cove. But that’s all the Mets could muster against the Giants’ Johnny Cueto (14-3), who limited damage despite allowing eight hits in his seven innings.
The Mets have left themselves little margin for error in their chase for a postseason spot. So they did themselves no favors with their sloppiness.
Poor baserunning wiped out a potential rally in the fifth. With runners on first and second, Kelly Johnson poked a single to second.
But running from second, Lugo appeared to miss a stop sign from third-base coach Tim Teufel. He rounded third, prompting Jose Reyes to run through second. The slow-footed Lugo wound up hung up in a rundown that ended the inning.
The Mets took that sloppiness with them into the field in the fifth, though they caught a break in that it cost them no runs.
Cabrera lost Hunter Pence’s pop-up to shallow center, allowing it to drop. Pence was wiped out on a goof of his own, doubled up when he ran to third on Eduardo Nuñez’s lineout to center.
Still, the Mets tempted fate again, this time when first baseman James Loney booted Joe Panik’s routine grounder. But the pitcher Cueto popped out to end the frame.
In his first game since hurting his knee July 31, Cabrera went 1-for-4. Cespedes 1-for-4.
Cespedes last played Aug. 3 at Yankee Stadium when he uncorked a swing late in the game and knew almost immediately that he could no longer play through the strained right quad he had spent a month protecting. It happened on the same day that he was spotted playing golf with former big-leaguer Kevin Millar, prompting the Mets to ask the slugger to cease playing during his recovery.
“I just want to make it really clear that I don’t believe golf affected me,” Cespedes said through a translator, the first time he has directly addressed the issue. “And it’s not just that I believe that, the doctors actually said that golf did not affect me. Last year, I played golf, as well, but there were different results last year with the team. So I think there was just less critique of me doing that in my free time.”
Of course, at this pace, the Mets will have plenty of chances to book their tee times.
..... - Newsday