Mets Struggles With Runners in Scoring Position Continue

The bats stayed cold in Boston Tuesday night, the Mets dropped their third game in a row for the first time this year and owner Steve Cohen was moved to tweet: “Welcome to the ups and downs of a baseball season. This too will pass. LGM.”

New York (29-20) was held to four hits in the 2-0 loss in front of 33,208 at Fenway Park, left seven men on base and went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position. The Mets have scored one run in two games against the Red Sox while going 1-for-15 with RISP, which was a troubling theme during the Subway Series as well. While scoring seven runs in three games against the Yankees last weekend, the Mets went 4-for-25 (.160) with RISP.

“Overall, we’re going through it,” manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters. “No doubt about it. We’re having a hard time putting guys on consistently. When we do get those guys on, we’re having a hard time getting them in.”

The Mets did hit into some bad luck on Tuesday, Mendoza said, pointing to a Brandon Nimmo drive to deep center with two men on that was caught at the warning track to end the third inning and a couple of hard hit balls in the fourth that the Red Sox turned into outs.

“Obviously some things aren’t bouncing our way,” Nimmo said. “Some at-bats are better than others. But I just think that for a period of time there we were able to overcome, we were able to have a few things bounce our way and we were able to have our pitching staff keep us in games where we were able to do one or two runs. Right now they are doing a great job of keeping us within striking distance but we’re just not having the big hit fall or come through in that situation.”

Nimmo, who went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and saw his batting average drop to .215, agreed with Cohen. Slumps are part of baseball.

“I’ve never encountered one year where we haven’t gone through something like this – even the 100-win (2022) season – we encountered it in September,” Nimmo said. “So it’s part of the game unfortunately, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t try and show up. But you just understand that you are going to go through things like this and you just go with the hope and the aspiration that tomorrow it can change so that’s what we’re going to do.”

“I think it’s one of those moments where there’s no looking around,” said Clay Holmes, whose record dropped to 5-3 after giving up two runs in six innings. “You got to look in the mirror and make sure that you’re doing everything you can. And nobody’s going to feel sorry for you. It’s keep our head up and keep moving forward.”

Co-hitting coach Eric Chavez told The Athletic before Tuesday’s game that the team has been concerned about hitting with RISP since more than a month ago when they dropped two out of three in Minnesota.

“It hasn’t gotten much better,” Chavez said. “We addressed it, and we let it be. But if things continue, it’s definitely something (where we’re) a little more stern: ‘This is a real thing and we need to start changing some things.'”

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