Mets Fall In Extra Innings To Dodgers For 2nd Straight Night To Drop Series
For the second straight night, the Mets and Dodgers went into extra innings, and for the second day in a row, Los Angeles took the lead in the top of the 10th.
With Seth Lugo unable to toss another inning and Trevor May, Edwin Diaz and Jeurys Familia all unavailable out of the bullpen tonight, the Mets opted to go to Yennsy Diaz with the go-ahead run on second.
And that's when Cody Bellinger put the Dodgers ahead for the first time with an RBI double.
While Diaz was able to limit the damage with a strikeout of Justin Turner, the Mets had their chance to tie it in the bottom of the 10th. But they failed to come back, as they fell by a score of 2-1.
After falling short in the series opener, the Mets did the same thing on Saturday night to lose the first two games of the series to the Dodgers.
The Mets are now 59-57 and 1.5 games back in the NL East after the Phillies and Braves both won tonight.
Starting pitchers Taijuan Walker and Walker Buehler dueled each other through seven innings, which saw both offenses struggle to score runs against them.
Despite going through a rough stretch since making his first All-Star team, Walker tossed his best outing since coming back from the break against a very strong Dodgers' lineup.
Walker did not allow a hit through the first six innings of the game. And although his no-hit bid was broken up by Will Smith on a game-tying solo homer in the seventh, he exited after 6.2 innings with the tie still intact.
Luckily, Aaron Loup was able to strand the go-ahead run at third base with a huge strikeout of Cody Bellinger. Prior to Loup's punch out, Mets manager Luis Rojas was ejected from the game for arguing balls and strikes.
Walker's final line was an impressive one, going 6.2 innings, allowing just one run on two hits, while striking out eight batters and walking three.
But unfortunately, the Mets wasted Walker's gem due to a lack of offense, which saw them scratch out one run on four hits.
The Mets and Dodgers did not produce much offense in this game with the only runs coming from Smith and Michael Conforto's solo homers through the first nine innings, which resulted in a 1-1 tie.
Buehler shut the Mets down for the most part, throwing seven innings, while giving up just the one run on four hits, to go along with 10 strikeouts.
Miguel Castro handled the top of the eighth for the Mets, and continued to dominate, as he did earlier in the season, with back-to-back strikeouts in a 1-2-3 inning. With the game still tied in the following inning, Lugo worked around a leadoff single to toss a scoreless frame of his own.
