Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports
Some baseball fans might try to tell you that home runs kill rallies. On Tuesday, the Syracuse Mets aimed to prove that double plays are the real rally killers. They hit into four different double plays and turned three of their own in the series opener against Lehigh Valley, falling 6-3.
Thomas Szapucki continued to scale upwards, throwing a season-high 71 pitches over four shaky innings and was helped out by a pair of double plays. That included a brilliant twin killing in the first inning started by a diving Travis Blankenhorn.
The scoring started in the second inning when Yairo Munoz scored a run on the second double play Szapucki coaxed. The walls caved in a tad for Szapucki in the third when John Andreoli doubled home a run and scored on Darick Hall’s RBI single. It was Hall’s 30th RBI of the season already, which leads the league. The left-hander ended his night by working out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth by striking out Bryson Stott. In doing so, he blew past the 65-pitch limit set for him by manager Kevin Boles.
Szapucki gave way to Eric Orze in the fifth and things immediately got hairy for the right-handed reliever. Donny Sands led off with a single and advanced to third when Carlos Cortes lost a line drive off of Hall’s bat in the stadium lights. It went for an untouched double. While pitching to the next batter, Dustin Peterson, Orze balked home Sands from third. He wound up recovering from the gaff to strike out three straight and keep the damage to one run.
The Mets offense had runners on base in seven innings, including five of the first six. Their lone scoring came in the sixth when Nick Plummer homered to straightaway center field against left-handed reliever Jeff Singer for a two-run shot. They left 16 runners on base overall.
The Syracuse lineup featured seven left-handed hitters against left-handed starter Ricardo Sanchez. The only right-handed hitters on the roster that didn’t play were backup catchers Nick Meyer and Nick Dini. Sanchez threw four strong frames, allowing no runs on three hits and two walks with five strikeouts.
“With our 12 positions players that we have here, eight of them are left-handed hitters. So, it’s not going to be where we’re doing matchups and everything else,” Boles said. “We’re just going to go with our top nine guys and go. If our guys are going to be big-league players, they’re going to have to face left-handed pitching, and they’re up for that challenge.”
Jake Reed threw two frames out of the Syracuse pen, pitching for the first time since April 26. He struck out four and looked excellent in his first inning, but came out diminished in his second. He gave up two runs in that eighth inning, one unearned, as a Khalil Lee throwing error on a Drew Maggi’s RBI single brought home a second run.
That effectively put the game out of reach for a Syracuse offense that had no extra-base hits outside of Plummer’s homer and just six hits overall. Carlos Cortes drove home a run with a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning against Connor Brogdon.
Four Syracuse arms combined to strikeout 11 IronPigs, but 10 hits and four walks provided too much traffic to contend with.
Syracuse falls to 8-16 on the season. The second of six games in this series kicks off on Wednesday at 6:35 p.m. with Jose Rodriguez on the mound against James Marvel.
