Mets' Starling Marte on fourth-inning error: 'I just missed it'
On a day when starting pitcher Sean Manaea didn’t have his best stuff on the mound, he needed his teammates around him to pick him up for the Mets to have a chance to win the second game of a three-game set against the Kansas City Royals.
Offensively, New York obliged, banging out seven runs on nine hits as the offense continues to improve after a sluggish team-wide start. Defensively, one play stuck out that the Mets and Manaea would like to have back.
With nobody on and one out in the fourth inning of a 4-4 game, Manaea got red-hot Bobby Witt Jr. to fly out to right field with what would’ve been the second out of the inning and a chance to have his first clean inning of the game. However, Starling Marte didn’t catch the ball and the speedy Witt Jr. wound up on third base.
“I just missed it,” Marte said after the game via an interpreter. “I closed the glove before the ball was in there and that’s just kind of how it played out.”
The inning snowballed from there with Manaea allowing a go-ahead, run-scoring single to Nick Loftin before Salvador Perez hit a two-run shot that gave the Royals a 7-4 lead -- while a tough play, it should be noted that Brandon Nimmo got a glove on the ball but couldn’t secure it and helped it over the orange line for a homer.
Manaea’s day was over after going 3.2 innings and giving up eight runs (six earned) on nine hits and three walks while striking out four. His ERA jumped from 0.82 to 4.30.
“Stuff happens,” Manaea said about the error and how it may have affected him. “You gotta get back out there and do your job and unfortunately I wasn’t able to do that so that’s on me and you just gotta keep pushing forward.”
Aside from Marte’s error, the Mets played a rather clean game as they were vying for their third straight win that would’ve got them back to .500 after an 0-5 start to the season. They even scored seven runs in the game, including three after being down 11-4 heading to the bottom of the sixth inning.
It’s the same resiliency that New York has shown as of late, even in losses.
“It’s just really good baseball, it’s winning baseball,” said Pete Alonso, who homered twice on Saturday. “We could’ve easily folded it in there towards the later part of the game but we battled, we scored some extra runs and we got their closer in the game so hopefully that helps us out tomorrow and helps us get a series W.”
Marte did his best to make up for his blunder in the field by also going yard leading off the eighth inning. He finished 3-for-5 at the dish and is batting .281 so far this season. The error was also just his first of the year, but he said after the game that he apologized to Manaea after it happened.
“When you have a pitcher like Sean who you can go up to and approach after the inning there and tell him ‘my bad’, you do that,” Marte said. “I have that type of trust with Sean that I went up to him and said my bad and also to the players that are in the game. It’s my bad because it’s a play that has to be made.”
In hindsight, Marte’s error probably wasn’t the only reason New York lost for just the third time in its last nine games. It only looks worse because of the toughness the Mets’ offense showed later in the game to make things interesting.
At the end of the day, that’s a positive.
In fact, the Mets have scored 42 runs in their last five games after scoring 25 runs in their first nine games.
“It’s really the focus and the approach of every single player that we have on this team,” Marte said. “We’re gonna continue to battle. It doesn’t matter how many runs the other team scores. We know that we’re playing a good team, but at the same time they know that they’re playing a team that’s not gonna give up and that’s gonna continue battling each and every play of the game so that’s a good sign.”
They'll look for the series win on Sunday in the rubber-game starting at 1:40 p.m.
