Game #126: Astros 3, Mets 1

At the very least, there was at least one offensive highlight tonight.

David Wright's 200th career home run wasn't nearly enough as the Mets' offense failed once again in a 3-1 loss to the league-worst Astros.

The Bad Stuff:

• Guess. Against one of the worst staffs in the bigs, 4 hits, 0-4 w/ RISP, 5 left on.

The Good Stuff:

• Jon Niese was a hard-luck loser tonight, allowing 3 runs on 6 hits in 7 innings with 2 walks and 5 strikeouts. The way things are going at the plate, things were unfortunately already lost when he allowed 2 runs in the 2nd inning.
• David Wright finally reached the 200 home run milestone, sending a laser off his bat in the 4th that just cleared the wall and clipped one of the supports of the right field foul pole. The round-tripper was upheld after review and Mr. Wright had his first round-tripper since July 27th in Arizona.
• Wright added another hit to finish the night 2-4 and bring his batting average back up to .319. The other hits were gained by Justin Turner (who doesn't get nearly the playing time he should) and Andres Torres.

Final Analysis:
I picked a good week to go back to college and miss most of these games. Here's the valleys the Mets have reached after today's L: 6 losses in a row, 5 home losses to last-place teams, making a guy (Jordan Lyles) who had won just 2 decisions all season look like Roy Oswalt in his prime, giving Houston's interim manager (Tony DeFrancesco) his first career victory. The bottom fell out long ago; it's just a matter now of how much of the whole machine will stay together before the end of the season, which unfortunately right now can't get here soon enough.

MM