The New York Mets lost their fourth game in a row last night, falling 4-2 to the National League leading San Francisco Giants.
Fresh off of being swept by the Chicago Cubs - the National League's worst team - the Mets sent Jonathan Niese (3-3) to the mound to try and put their losing streak to an end. Niese did his part by having yet another sold outing, going seven innings while allowing two runs on five hits. Niese has not allowed more than three earned runs in any of his 12 starts this season.
However, the Mets did what they have done best this season, which is waste a starting pitcher's good performance. The not-so-amazins did not get a base runner until the fifth inning, and did not get their first hit until sixth.
Giant's starter Matt Cain (1-3) was making it look easy early on, retiring the first 12 men he faced. The Mets were not able to get anything going until the seventh inning when center fielder Matt den Dekker lead things off with a double. Daniel Murphy was the next man up and he hit a two-run home run to give the Mets (28-33) a 2-1 lead. MLB.com posted the video of Murhpy's go-ahead home run.
The Giants (40-21) wasted no time getting back into the game, tying things up in the bottom half of the seventh with a single from Brandon Crawford, his second run batted in of the game.
The turning point of the game was Buster Posey's two-run home run off of reliever Carlos Torres in the eighth inning to give the Giants, now 20-9 at home, a 4-2 lead. After Torres walked the leadoff hitter on four pitches, the former MVP Posey crushed a shot to left-center field.
Despite his strong performance against MLB's first 40 win team, Niese was hard on himself after the game while taking questions from the New York Daily News“I shouldn’t have let Crawford get anything to hit. Both those runs I made mistakes. They put together some good at-bats. With him being the only lefty (hitter) in the lineup I shouldn’t have made those mistakes.”
The Mets will have their hands full tonight as they will have to try to end their season high four game losing streak against Giant's ace Tim Hudson (6-2). They will answer with Bartolo Colon (5-5), who has pitched well of late, with the Mets winning the last four games in which he has started. The penultimate game of the Mets 11-game road trip starts tonight at 10:05 PM.