José Quintana Falters as Mets Fall to Giants 5-2

The Mets (12-10) traveled to San Francisco (11-13) on Monday to continue their West Coast road trip after winning two out of three against the Dodgers in Los Angeles. Jose Quintana (1-2, 4.21 ERA) took the mound against righty Keaton Winn (2-3, 3.54), but Quintana’s early season struggles with command continued, and it allowed the Giants to coast to a 5-2 win.

Quintana entered the day with 11 walks in 20 2/3 innings, an unsteady 4.8 walks per nine. That’s nearly double his career number of 2.7 walks per nine. For whatever reason, he has been throwing more and more balls and walking more and more batters.

He had a clean first inning in this game but quickly allowed two soft hits in the second inning. This appeared to rattle him a bit as he started throwing more balls and pitching around batters. He only allowed one walk in the inning, but with the bases loaded due to the two earlier hits, he allowed a two-out, two-run hit to the nine-hitter Nick Ahmed. That gave the Giants an early 2-0 lead.

The third inning was more of the same for Quintana, who allowed a walk and a base hit to start the inning. After recording a strikeout in a 3-2 count, Quintana allowed a double down the left field line to Matt Chapman, scoring two more to double the Giants’ lead to four.

Mandatory Credit: Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports

Quintana managed to settle down with quiet fourth and fifth innings, and he appeared to be doing the Mets’ bullpen a favor by going out for the sixth inning. He would last just one more pitch, as Michael Conforto led off and crushed the first pitch he saw over the wall in right field. That officially ended Quintana’s night with a stat line of five runs in five-plus innings, allowing seven hits, three walks, and striking out four. His ERA on the season ballooned from 3.05 to 4.21.

Starting for the Giants, Keaton Winn had a dissimilar game from Quintana in that he routinely got ahead of batters and kept his pitch count down. Making his 10th major league start in his 14th major league appearance, Winn looked like a seasoned veteran in the way he mowed through the Mets’ lineup. His lone blemishes through four innings, infield hits by Starling Marte and Pete Alonso, wound up being erased, so Winn faced the minimum in that span.

That was until Alonso clocked his 199th career home run on the second pitch of the fifth inning to put the Mets on the board. It was his first home run in 28 at-bats and his seventh total of the year. The Mets would have loved for that to have served as the start of a big inning, but Winn kept his composure and eased through the next three batters.

After an easy 1-2-3 inning in the sixth, Winn stayed on to pitch in the seventh inning for the first time in his career, but he finally faced trouble. After allowing a single to Marte and a four-pitch walk to Francisco Lindor, he was pulled in favor of Ryan Walker. Unable to cash in on a golden opportunity, the Mets’ 3-4-5 hitters went down in order.

Things got interesting in the ninth inning with closer Camilo Doval on in a non-save situation. Brandon Nimmo led off with a walk before Starling Marte advanced him on a fielder’s choice. Then, an error on what should’ve been a sure out allowed Lindor to reach when Doval dropped a throw while trying to cover first base. Nimmo subsequently came home on a wild pitch before Alonso recorded the second out of the inning, but a Brett Baty walk (somehow) brought the tying run to the plate. The game’s fate fell into the hands of DJ Stewart, but he weakly grounded out to put the game to rest.

The Mets fall to 12-10 with the loss, their second in a row. With Quintana’s struggles and the bats remaining asleep for the second game in a row, the Mets never really had a chance but somehow stayed alive until the final out. The Mets are now in danger of losing their first series since they started 0-5, so they will try to keep their series win streak alive with a victory Tuesday night.

Statistic of the Game: The Walks Keep Adding Up

The Mets’ pitching staff entered Monday with the worst walk rate of any team in the major leagues, and that trend of walking too many batters continued in this game. Quintana walked three in five innings, putting his walks per nine innings on the year closer to five. The bullpen faced a similar fate when Sean Reid-Foley walked two more to give the Mets’ pitching staff five on the night. The staff has pitched well this year, keeping runs down despite all the walks, but that won’t remain true if the free passes continue to plague this team.

Player of the Game

With the pitching staff struggling and most of the bats unable to do damage, Pete Alonso was the only Mets player to show up in this one. He finished the game 2-for-4 with a solo homer, putting him within one of 200 on his career. Through the first 22 games of the season, Alonso has a .253 batting average and .847 OPS.

On Deck

The series against the Giants continues at Oracle Park on Tuesday at 9:45 p.m. ET. The matchup features a pair of impressive righty starters, with Luis Severino (2-1, 2.14 ERA) taking the mound against San Francisco’s ace  Logan Webb (2-1, 2.93 ERA). Severino will face the Giants for the first time, while Webb has pitched to a 3.52 ERA in four career starts against the Mets.

The game will air on PIX11 and MLB Network.

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