The Mets and Astros play a rubber game this afternoon full of daytime baseball. After taking the first game in the series, the Mets couldn’t come back last night losing 4-2. Justin Verlander allowed four runs over seven innings and the Mets couldn’t break through the Astros pitching until the 8th inning. Now the Mets will face a tough pitcher for a second straight day in Cristian Javier. Let’s get this series win!
Tylor Megill pitched n 15 games in all of 2022, and he will be pitching in his 15th game in 2023 this afternoon. So far, over 69 innings, Megill has a 4.83 ERA, 5.05 FIP, 1.609 WHIP and an 87 ERA+. Megill is coming off of a terrific start against the Cardinals where he held them to a solo homer and nothing else really over six innings, while tying his season high for strikeouts at seven. He looks to make back-to-back quality starts for the first time this season. Tonight is also an interesting question in familiarity. Tylor has never faced anyone on the Astros roster in a major league game before, but with the proximity of Astros and Mets spring training camps, he’s probably faced them in Florida.
Cristian Javier had a tremendous 2022 that saw him go from the bullpen to becoming a mainstay in the rotation. He’s off to another great start this year with a 2.90 ERA, 3.59 FIP, 1.041 WHIP and a 145 ERA+ over 80 2/3 innings. After four consecutive starts (starting on May 16th) of allowing exactly one run, he hit a bump on June 9th against Cleveland. Cleveland was able to tag him for four runs over five innings, probably his worst start of the season. He rebounded nicely his last time out against the Nationals, holding them scoreless over six innings. The Mets have the following career numbers against him:
- Mark Canha 2-12, 3 BB, 7 K
- Tommy Pham 1-5, BB, K
- Starling Marte 0-4, K
- Eduardo Escobar 1-4, K
- Daniel Vogelbach 0-2
Three Things To Watch For:
- Tommy Pham is having a month. Since June 4th, the first game in June when Tommy registered a plate appearance, Tommy has gone 17-for-53 with six doubles, four homers and 10 runs scored. That’s a .321/.330/.660 slash line. He is currently in a six game hitting streak where he has gone 9-for-24 with two doubles and homer (.375/.400/.583).
- The Mets bullpen is rested. Thanks to Max Scherzer going eight innings on Monday and Verlander going seven yesterday, the short-handed Mets bullpen has gotten a lot of rest. Grant Hartwig made his major league debut on Monday and Jeff Brigham was the only pitcher used last night. Hopefully this means that bullpen is ready to go this afternoon if needed.
- A series to forget so far for Brandon Nimmo. Brandon Nimmo has gone 0-for-9 at the plate in Houston with five strikeouts. The whole thing is very un-Nimmo. The only series I can find that really compares in is Atlanta at the end of April he went 1-for-12 with six strikeouts. Can Nimmo get some hits today before this starts to turn into a slump?
Let’s Go Mets!
