Tylor Megill Shelled By Giants In Worst Outing Of Career As Mets Drop Series Opener
Despite shutting down the Giants across six innings of one-run baseball in his last start, Mets rookie Tylor Megill had to face them again six days later and got ambushed on Tuesday night in an 8-0 loss.
In what proved to be the worst outing of Megill's young big-league career, the Giants jumped all over him for seven runs on 11 hits, while blasting four homers.
Megill lasted just 3.2 innings, before Trevor Williams came on in relief of his clunker with two outs in the top of the fourth. As a result of this poor performance, Megill's record dropped to 1-3 and his ERA ballooned up from 3.21 to 4.07 on the season.
"I didn't really have a lot of off-speed command today," said Megill after the game. "And it seemed as though their game plan was totally different this time around. Aggressive and swinging early in counts. They were ready to hit fastballs and they ran it up."
Manager Luis Rojas felt Megill wasn't locating his fastball tonight either, which led to three of the Giants' four homers.
"I thought he didn't locate the fastball like he has when he was successful," said Rojas. "He was down in the zone....three of the homers were on fastballs."
After not pitching at all in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling the minor league season, the Mets have asked a lot of Megill, who officially reached the 100 innings mark tonight between the majors and minors this year. And at this point, his workload is something worth keeping an eye on, as his previous career-high for innings pitched was 71.2, which came two years ago in 2019.
While Rojas doesn't believe this factored into Megill's rough outing, he did say they could potentially discuss cutting back his workload sometime in the near future. But for now, the righty will still start every fifth day.
Following Megill's exit, the Mets found themselves in a 7-0 hole that they never came close to climbing out of.
And that's partly because of Giants lefty spot starter Sammy Long, who shut them down through 5.1 scoreless innings.
"Fastball and the slow curveball and guys were going in between on those two pitches," said Rojas of his offense's struggles against Long. "He kept us off balance with the velocity differential."
Despite getting Francisco Lindor back from the injured list, pairing him up with Javier Báez for the first time, the Mets' offense showed little-to-no signs of life with just five hits and zero runs on the night.
Lindor went 0-for-4 in this contest, and the Mets' bats created minimal chances to score in this game.
"Yeah, I would love to say we have the answers of why we've struggled and why I'm struggling, but I don't," said Lindor, after his first game back since July 16. "We work hard, we grind and we compete, day after day, and we just haven't gotten the results that we've wanted, and it's showing right now. Early in the year, we were first place. Now it's showing."
"We've got to find a way, we've got to figure this out. But I'll tell you one thing: The guys are working very hard, they're working extremely hard day in and day out. And not just the hitters. Pitchers, coaches, trainers, everybody. Everybody is working as a unit, we're just not having the results that we want to have right now. It sucks, but we've got to continue to play the game."
In the top of the eighth, the Giants added another run against Miguel Castro on an infield single from Brandon Belt. Belt went 4-for-5 with two homers and three RBIs in this contest, while the Giants' offense as a whole had 15 hits.
Overall, the Amazins' made mistake after mistake, and just looked flat in almost every aspect of the game. And although they pulled out a big win in their series finale with the Dodgers on Sunday, they once again failed to create any momentum, which is why they have fallen so far in the standings.
The Mets are now 61-64 on the season, but luckily didn't lose ground in the NL East, as the Yankees hung on to beat the first-place Braves. With 37 games left to go and a big deficit to makeup, Lindor stressed the need for urgency.
“Thirty-seven games, it’s time to go. It’s been time to go," said Lindor. "We got to find a way. We got to find a way, continue to compete, continue to grind, not make any excuses. We just got to go out there and battle. This is it. This is what we get paid for. We get paid to go out there and compete and give it our best. A month is not a lot of time."
However, Tuesday evening's loss made any hope of a Mets' playoff berth/turnaround look like a pipe dream at this point with just over a month left to play in the regular season.
