Their .550 winning percentage on the road entering their game against the Florida Marlins on Monday night was the fifth best in the majors. Their .458 mark at home was fifth worst.
Settling in at Citi Field after rough weekend in Washington, the Mets played down to that trend.
The Mets’ offense slumbered against Marlins starter Javier Vazquez for most of the game, until Lucas Duda, the rookie tasked with replacing the departed superstar Carlos Beltran, hit a two-run homer with two outs in the ninth to tie the score.
But in the top of the 10th, Jason Isringhausen, who replaced the traded Francisco Rodriguez as closer, allowed three straight one-out singles. Then, with the bases loaded, Mike Stanton ripped a home run into the left field seats to give the Marlins a 7-3 victory.
The loss was the Mets’ third straight, and the second in a row in which they tied the score with a ninth-inning home run only to lose it in their opponents’ next time at bat.
“Very unfortunately, we’ve been here before,” Manager Terry Collins said. “And we’ve bounced back from before and we’ll bounce back again.”
Stanton’s grand slam could have been avoided had first baseman Daniel Murphy made a headier play when Dewayne Wise, who advanced runners to second and third with a single, overran first base. Murphy cut off the throw from Duda, but instead of throwing it to Justin Turner covering first, he tried chasing Wise back to the bag. He made a belated flip to Turner, but it was too late.
“I was trying to make sure the run didn’t score, and I got caught in no man’s land,” Murphy said. “It changed the whole inning. It was a bad play on my part.”
Getting Wise would have left Isringhausen with two outs and first base open, and after the game Collins said he probably would have walked Stanton, one of the more dangerous power hitters in baseball this season.
“He makes mistakes,” Collins said of Murphy. “But I bet you that never happens again.”
Hours earlier, the first day of August had offered a symbolic demarcation of sorts, a chance for the Mets to step back and consider the state of their affairs as they enter the final two months of the season.
To be sure, they are long shots to make the playoffs. They are seven and a half games behind the Atlanta Braves in the National League wild-card race, but with the Braves visiting New York for a three-game series this weekend, along with another set later this month, the Mets on Monday could not help portraying their current 10-game homestand as vital.
The actions, or lack thereof, of the Mets’ front office last weekend as well seemed to underscore the team’s hopeful outlook.
General Manager Sandy Alderson disclosed some of his thought processes from the past week. The Mets’ two big trades, which sent away Rodriguez and Beltran, were interpreted by some as a clear signal of surrender. But Alderson said he refrained from dealing other players to give his team a chance to win this year.
“We could have done something with one or two other players,” Alderson said. “But we decided on balance that we were better off keeping those players and giving the remaining group as good of an opportunity as possible to see how far they could go.”
He said that as the nonwaiver trade deadline approached on Sunday, the Mets looked for a middle reliever to bolster their floundering bullpen. Alderson said it was not uncommon for teams to morph from sellers to buyers in the trade market in a matter of weeks. The Mets still have time to make that switch, he said.
But on Monday, they showed that their needs may extend beyond the bullpen.
The Marlins nagged Mike Pelfrey from the start, piecing together a three-run lead through the first three and a half innings. Pelfrey left the game after six innings, having given up only three runs. But he battled hard to get there, throwing 119 pitches.
The Mets got a run back in the fourth, when Jason Bay smashed a 1-2 fastball that drifted up in the strike zone into the bullpen in right-center field, making the score 3-1.
Duda’s blast in the ninth — 425 feet into the center-field seats — sent the fans into frenzy. The Mets players urged Duda, a soft-spoken 25-year-old, out of the dugout for a curtain call.
“It was really loud,” Duda said of the crowd of 28,862. “I went out there, and gave them a little fist pump, and that was it. It was pretty cool.”
But they were booing soon enough, after Stanton’s homer settled into the seats in left.
