Jose Quintana Having Trouble With August Consistency

The dog days of August can have a rough effect on any player. Unfortunately, for the New York Mets, Jose Quintana has picked a rough time of the year to have one of his more inconsistent stretches. In Tuesday night’s 9-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles, Quintana had his second-worst outing of the season against one of baseball’s better lineups.

On the night, Quintana went five innings, allowed seven runs on eight hits, walked two batters, and struck out three on 90 pitches (57 strikes). He did allow a pair of home runs, which is the fifth time he has allowed multiple home runs in a game this year. Those two long balls came from Anthony Santander in the top of the first and former Met James McCann in the fourth.

Even though Quintana was able to finish five innings, he has not gone more than five innings in three of his four August starts. He has pitched to an 8.27 ERA this month and has yet to record a win. The only other month that he has done that this year came back in May, when he went 0-3 with a 7.20 ERA in five starts.

While the Mets don’t necessarily need Quintana to be an ace, they do need him to keep the team in the game and he was unable to do that on Tuesday. He was able to get ten swings and misses on his pitches and four of them came on his sinker (Baseball Savant). However, the sinker was the pitch that did him in the fourth on the McCann home run. Santander’s home run in the first came on a 3-2 curveball.

One of Quintana’s biggest issues this season has been giving up the long ball. His 22 home runs allowed are five more than any other Mets pitcher (Sean Manaea is second with 17). That number is tied for the fourth-most in the National League.

Yes, that tie is with the likes of good pitchers such as Freddy Peralta and Aaron Nola, but that is not the stat you want to keep the same company as those pitchers with. In addition, his .247 batting average against is tied for the ninth-highest in the NL.

As for the reason that might be leading to all the home runs allowed, Quintana said after the game that he needs to have better execution of his pitches.

“Execution. Sometimes, I don’t hit my spots well. But I totally have my confidence high, I keep competing and keep fighting. This is the perfect time to keep the heads up and help the team,” Quintana said.

Quintana still has a month left to go in the season, but he is on pace to set a new career-high for home runs allowed in a season (25 allowed with the Chicago Cubs in 2018). When you don’t have the high strikeout totals, you have to be able to keep opposing hitters from crushing the ball out of the ballpark and the veteran has not done that.

Right now, there is no other option the Mets can turn to as an alternative to Quintana. They need him to find that consistency that he had in the early portion of the summer. Even in the Seattle start, that one crooked inning in the seventh ended up ruining a start in which he had retired 14 batters in a row at one point.

It is up to Quintana to figure out the execution issues and fix them because, with the way the bullpen has been used, they need him to consistently pitch into the sixth inning.

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