How Mets Won Cardinals Series

The Mets just completed a series in which they won three out of four games from the defending National League champion Cardinals. How did they do it? Certainly not with offense.

In the three games they won, the Mets scored a total of nine runs, banging out just 18 hits for a batting average of .204. These are not numbers that usually go with success. But add in pitching and you’ve got a winning recipe.

Mets pitchers allowed the Cardinals just three runs in the games St. Louis lost (they only scored two in the game they won). We all know how impotent the Mets offense is, so the poor Mets output is not shocking. But the Cards actually have some pretty good hitters, so the Mets pitchers deserve much of the credit for winning the series.

The defense was also very good, turning in several key plays throughout the series. None was more important than when Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Ruben Tejada threw out the tying run at home in the ninth inning of Wednesday night’s game. Travis d’Arnaud did a great job of not blocking the plate and applying the perfect tag on the play.

So pitching and defense, vital to any winning team. The Mets have it, in this series, anyway. But if the Mets are serious about winning, they simply have to hit and score more runs. The Mets cannot continue to hit .204 and expect to win series after series, much less contend for the post season.

Eventually the Mets will hit. Let’s hope when they do, the pitching and defense is still there to complement it. Because if everything is clicking, who knows how far this team can go?