Mets Need to Clean Up Sloppy Defense

Mark Vientos threw the ball over the catcher’s head. Tyrone Taylor played a would-be fly out into a single. Juan Soto couldn’t field a base hit cleanly, which cost him a chance to throw out a runner at home.

The Mets escaped Miami with a dramatic 6-5 victory in 11 innings Wednesday (thank you, Pete Alonso), but this was not, as the old slogan went, “baseball like it oughta be.”

“Crazy game, crazy game,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “We didn’t play well early. We didn’t make a couple of plays, at-bats on and off. I’m just glad that we found a way to get the job done, got the win, won the series and now we get to go home and play in front of our fans.”

The Mets have committed four errors in six games, which places them in the middle of the pack in the majors, but some mistakes in the field don’t turn up in the box score. Taylor and Soto, for example, were not charged with errors.

Questionable decisions in the field won’t find their way into the box score either. Before Vientos’ throwing error allowed the Marlins to take a 2-1 lead in the third inning, he had to choose whether to go home or try for an inning-ending double play.

“What is Vientos doing anyway?” former MLB outfielder and Marlins TV analyst Rod Allen said during the broadcast. “That’s a 5-4-3 double play. I don’t even know what he’s thinking. I mean, it’s a one-hopper, you’re supposed to go to second base and then go to first base, but he tried to get the out at home plate, and he airmailed the catcher.”

Vientos had another tough choice to make in the seventh inning: field a bouncer up the line or see if it would go foul. There was a runner on third, making the call still more complicated. Where to make the throw? He chose to field it. He threw to first, and Otto Lopez beat it out for an infield hit. The Marlins led 3-1.

Later in the inning came the single to Soto and a 4-1 Marlins lead. The sloppy defense appeared to be contagious.

While the Mets got away with it on Wednesday, they were less fortunate on Tuesday, when Francisco Lindor made an error that led to two unearned runs that proved decisive in a 4-2 Marlins win. On Opening Day, an error by Luisangel Acuña was costly in a 3-1 loss to the Astros.

“I felt we played a clean game except two pitches, my two ground balls,” Lindor said after the loss on Tuesday. “So I take a lot of pride in (my defense). It doesn’t feel good.”

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