Can’t win ‘em all

The Mets’ longest winning streak of the season was stopped last night as they dropped the middle game of their series to the Padres by a score of 3-1. The offense was befuddled by Blake Snell, who came in to the game with an ERA under 1.00 in his last eight starts and only continued to dominate in this one, allowing just one hit over six innings.

Snell struck out 11 Mets, including seven of the first eight batters. The Mets finally got a baserunner in the third, when Snell walked Mark Canha and Brandon Nimmo followed with an infield single, but a groundout by Tommy Pham ended the threat.

David Peterson was mostly solid in his third outing since returning from the minors, but ran in to trouble in the second. Gary Sanchez led off the frame with a double, and then Jake Cronenworth reached on an infield single, setting the Padres up with runners on the corners and nobody out.

The next batter, Brandon Dixon, lofted what looked to be a single into shallow right, but Cronenworth did not get a good read off first and went back to the bag thinking it would be caught. It wasn’t. He was thrown out at second, but the run still scored. It went down as the rare 9-6 fielder’s choice.

Peterson, given a lifeline to get out of the inning only allowing the one run, could not take advantage. The next hitter, Mattew Batten, hit his first major league home run to give the Padres a 3-0 lead.

Peterson would settle down and would not allow another run over 5.1 innings, but with Snell on the mound, that was enough.

The Mets threatened again in the sixth when Snell walked two in a row and looked to be fading as he crossed 100 pitches, but he got Francisco Lindor to line out and got Pete Alonso to chase a 2-0 changeup out of the zone and bounce out to short, continuing Alonso’s struggles.

The Mets finally put a run on the board in the seventh on Francisco Alvarez’s 17th homer of the season, a solo shot into the seats in left field. With that homer, Alvarez became the first Mets catcher since Mike Piazza to hit as many as 17 homers in a season.

Even though the bullpen combination of Grant Hartwig, Trevor Gott, and Dominic Leone held the Padres scoreless, the Mets offense couldn’t capitalize against the Padres bullpen. Josh Hader came in for the ninth and even though he allowed a leadoff single to Lindor and looked a little wild, he struck out both Alonso and Alvarez, and then got Jeff McNeil to ground out to end the game.

The loss drops the Mets back to 5 games under ,500, but they remain 6.5 out of the third wild card as the Phillies lost yesterday.

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What’s WPA?

Big Mets winner: Grant Hartwig, +2.1% WPA

Big Mets loser: Pete Alonso, -13.8%

Mets pitchers: -10.8% WPA

Mets hitters: -29.2% WPA

Teh aw3s0mest play: Francisco Alvarez hits a home run in the top of the seventh, +7.5% WPA

Teh sux0rest play: Matthew Battan his a two-run homer in the bottom of the second, -15.9% WPA