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Following a tough 13-game stretch that saw the Mets get swept at home by the Tampa Bay Rays and then win just three out of 10 straight games against NL East opponents, the team came into Pittsburgh this weekend with a chance to right the ship against one of the worst teams, record-wise, in the National League.<\/p>\n
But hopes of turning things around quickly dissipated, and what could have been a bounce-back weekend became another nightmarish series for the Mets, as the Pirates swept the three-game set in dominant fashion, outscoring New York 30-4.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating, and we are all frustrated, obviously. Not gonna lie, we\u2019re better than that, and they know that,\u201d manager Carlos Mendoza<\/strong> said after Sunday\u2019s 12-1 defeat. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough stretch, but we\u2019ve got to be better. \u00a0It starts with me. We believe in those guys. Off day tomorrow, and then we\u2019ve got another good team coming into town in the Brewers. They\u2019re playing well, so we\u2019ve got to bring our best game.<\/p>\n \u201c[We\u2019ll] continue to support the guys, but obviously we\u2019re not happy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mets found themselves in an early hole on Sunday that proved to be too much for the club to dig out of, as starter Frankie Montas <\/strong>allowed five two-out runs in the first inning, including back-to-back home runs from Oneil Cruz <\/strong>and Tommy Pham.<\/strong><\/p>\n Montas stuck around for 4.0 innings, allowing six earned runs on seven hits while striking out five and walking one, but his poor first inning was too much for the Mets to overcome.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cTo be honest, just in that first inning I felt like I was missing my spots a little bit,\u201d Montas said. \u201cI thought I threw some pretty good pitches after that.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I wasn\u2019t really commanding my fastball the way I wanted to, and that\u2019s the thing. If you\u2019re not hitting your spots, they\u2019re going to hit you pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mets, who are now just 19-25 on the road this season and currently sit 1.5 games behind Philadelphia in the NL East standings, have an off day on Monday before welcoming the Milwaukee Brewers (winners of eight of their last 10) to Citi Field, starting on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n The Mets know they were outplayed by the Pirates in every facet during this weekend\u2019s set, but Francisco Lindor<\/strong> explained that the hope is the off day allows them to reset before facing a hot Brewers club.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n “It’s a tough stretch for sure. Hopefully getting the day off, the mental day off, and getting away from the field, we can come back and get back on the horse,\u201d Lindor said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a big league team on the other side,\u201d he added later about the three-game sweep. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to tip our cap to them, they outplayed us. They pitched better than us, they hit better than us, they got on base better than us, they played better defense. It\u2019s a big league team on the other side. With that being said, there\u2019s a sense of, yeah, we\u2019re frustrated that we\u2019re not winning, but at the end of the day it\u2019s just part of the adversity that we\u2019re dealing with right now.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got to stick together and play as hard as we can to come out of it. Hopefully once we\u2019re out of it, we don\u2019t go back to something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Mets were swept by the Pittsburgh Pirates, dropping Sunday’s game by a score of 12-1 while being outscored 30-4 in the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1952,2066,2128,2137,2482,2480,2305,1902,2445,2481,2120,2450],"class_list":["post-74653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-brewers","tag-francisco-lindor","tag-frankie-montas","tag-mets","tag-national-league","tag-nl-east","tag-oneil-cruz","tag-philadelphia","tag-pirates","tag-pittsburgh-this-weekend","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tommy-pham"],"yoast_head":"\n