The Mets went into Friday night with three rookie starters lined up to face the Rangers in a big series at Citi Field.
Crazy, right?
“Crazy? Probably,” manager Carlos Mendoza said before Jonah Tong opened against former Mets ace Jacob deGrom.
The first inning of the first night of the gambit couldn’t have gone worse than it did.
Tong was gone after two-thirds of an inning with the Mets trailing 6-0. Heading to the bottom of the first, all the Mets needed to do was score at least seven runs in a game started by deGrom.
Texas’ strategy against Tong in his third big-league start was obvious. The Rangers took 18 of his first 19 pitches. That resulted in a walk, a strikeout looking and another walk.
Tong then got Jake Burger to fly out to center for the second out. But Josh Jung blooped an RBI single to right and, on the next pitch, Alejandro Osuna lined a run-scoring single to left for a 2-0 Texas lead.
After another walk, Cody Freeman hit a two-run single and Michael Helman finished Tong’s night with a two-run double that made it 6-0.
Huascar Brazoban came in to get the final out as Brandon Nimmo made a backpedaling, tumbling catch in left.
Tong, who came in with a 4.09 ERA, saw it climb to 8.49. He allowed four hits and walked three. Of his 40 pitches, 20 were strikes.
To add insult to injury, deGrom retired the Mets in the bottom of the first on three groundouts. It took six pitches.
Brandon Sproat will make his second big-league start on Saturday. Nolan McLean goes Sunday in his sixth start (the righthander is 4-1 with a 1.42 ERA).
Going into the night, the Mets had lost six in a row. They led the Reds and Giants by 1½ games for the final National League wild-card spot.
The Rangers came in having won four in a row and 15 of 20 to thrust themselves back into the American League wild-card race.
Mendoza admitted it was unusual for a team in a playoff race to start three rookies in a row.
“[If] you would have asked me a couple of months ago that all three of them were going to be here, I’ll probably tell you one of them might be here,” he said. “But here we are. You’ve got to give them credit.
“My confidence level is high. We trust these guys. But at the same time, Jonah is making his third one. Sproat’s about to make his second. But hey, they understand where we’re at.”
The Mets have always been a pitching-rich organization. Former manager Bobby Valentine, who was on hand to promote Saturday’s Mets Alumni Classic Game, said he liked what he had seen so far from the new trio.
“The franchise has a history of three pitchers getting together and being young together,” Valentine said. “I think these guys can really throw the ball forward. I think that they all have special characteristics of advancing the ball towards the plate. I don’t know the guys at all. What Carlos was saying here is you can’t teach experience, and they don’t have experience, so let’s not try to teach it. Let’s see if they can gain it and continue to move forward. Sometimes experience is a real bump in the road.”
In a strange twist, former staff ace Kodai Senga was also pitching on Friday – for Triple-A Syracuse. Senga agreed to a minor-league demotion last week to try to get his mechanics worked out.
Notes & quotes: The three-inning Alumni Classic Game, which is the Mets’ version of an Old-Timers’ Day game, will take place before the 4:10 p.m. contest against Texas. Fans are encouraged to be in their seats by 2 p.m. Team Shea Stadium (managed by Valentine and Willie Randolph and featuring former Mets such as Mike Piazza and Jose Reyes) will take on Team Citi Field (managed by Terry Collins and Jerry Manuel and featuring former players such as Bartolo Colon and Matt Harvey) . . . The Mets held a moment of silence for former manager Davey Johnson, who died September 5 at age 82.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
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