Big Nights For Megill, Vogelbach and Pham Lift Mets Over the Cards By Rich Coutinho?TheNYExtra.com
The Mets did some things last night they had no done in quite a few weeks. They plated 3 runs in the first inning, got a Daniel Vogelbach homer and cruised to a win without using Adam Ottavino or David Robertson.
On this night, Tylor Megill was razor sharp giving up 1 run in six innings. He did not walk a single hitter and struck out seven winning his 6th game in 10 decisions this year. Like many of the Met starting pitchers, he loves pitching here at Citi as he has a 2.79 ERA in seven home starts allowing three runs or less in each of those starts.
Megill got a big boost from the Met offense as they plated 3 runs in the first frame–an inning that has befuddled the offense all season, But on this night, both Bret Baty and Tommy Pham got huge 2 out hits that scored those 3 runs putting the Cardinals behind the eight ball very early in the contest.
They also got a solo homer from Daniel Vogelbach who has been slumping at the plate so much he was given a few days off to work on things. Whatever he was working on seemed to help as he went yard for the first time since May 7th. In the clubhouse after the game Tommy Pham put it best when he said, “Daniel was having a tough time but he works so hard, and we all felt so good for him when he hit that homer. As a team, things are getting better for us. We all know how talented we are and know our time seems to be finally arriving.”
One of the things you hear from every player in that Met clubhouse is no matter how bad things are going, you MUST trust the process and both Pham and Vogelbach echoed those sentiments giving you the sense this team is starting to turn the corner.
Don’t get me wrong–they are still 3 games under 500 and that is far from where we all thought they would reside in mid-June. But there are still a ton of games to play and I have to be honest. I like what I see and know minus Pete Alonso scoring runs will be a challenge. But some things are percolating right now with the biggest of those things being the emergence of Starling Marte who is batting .333 over his last 11 games.
I sincerely felt late in the season in 2022 the Marte injury really hurt the Mets. And coming off surgery in the off-season, it has taken him some time to find his stroke. But returning him to the top of the order to bat side by side with Brandon Nimmo could really jump start this offense and we saw that last night. Both are great on-base guys with incredible speed and that will give the Mets RBI bats plenty of traffic on the bases. His defense in the outfield is also a huge plus for the Mets.
Starling Marte could be a big reason why the Mets get back in the race for the playoffs. Mark my words. He is a huge variable in that equation.