CINCINNATI — Brandon Sproat‘s Sunday outing in Cincinnati was anything but typical.
Of course, this outing was never going to be typical. The ballpark was different, the uniform was different and while his catcher, Francisco Alvarez, was familiar, even he too was different than the one who has been behind the plate for most of his starts this season.
A top pitching prospect, the right-hander made his big league debut Sunday at Great American Ballpark. It was a stellar debut, with the rookie rendering the Cincinnati Reds hitless until the sixth inning. But Reds right-hander Hunter Greene absolutely dominated the Mets, striking out 12 over seven innings to hand them a 3-2 loss.
The Reds (72-71) took the series, 3-2, and now own the tiebreaker over the Mets (76-67) in the NL Wild Card.
Greene was still throwing gas in the seventh inning. The Mets could do nothing with a triple-digit fastball that reached 101.5 MPH and stayed around 100 throughout the entire outing, whiffing on his fastball 11 times. They missed on his other two pitches as well, a slider and splitter.
Greene struck out the first five hitters he faced, and seven of the first nine. Brett Baty hit a one-out slider in the top of the third over the right field fence for a home run to give the Mets a 1-0 lead, which seemed like a herculean feat the way the right-hander was pitching.
It was the only hit the Mets managed against Greene (6-4), who didn’t even allow much traffic on the basepaths. He walked two hitters, one in the fourth and one in the seventh, before striking out the next three to end his outing.
Yet it was Sproat who managed to carry a no-hitter into the sixth inning. The 24-year-old University of Florida product allowed a run before he even allowed a hit, with the Reds tying the game at 1-1 on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the fourth. Sproat walked four, struggling with his command at times. He walked Noelvi Marte to start the fourth, and the outfielder then swiped second, and advanced to third on a ground-ball.
A fly ball by Austin Hays broke up the shutout, but Sproat recovered to get the final out, before working around a two-out walk in the fifth.
He ran out of gas in the sixth, finally surrendering a hit to Noelvi Marte, a one-out single to right field on the first pitch. Elly De La Cruz then doubled to left field to score the go-ahead run, and took third on the throw. A third straight hit, this one a single by Hays, gave the Reds a 3-1 lead.
Sproat (0-1) struck out the next two hitters he faced to end his outing. Three hits, three earned runs and seven strikeouts was still an excellent debut, but it was tough to match what Greene was doing.
Juan Soto homered in the ninth, and the Mets had two on with one out facing right-hander Tony Santillan, but Starling Marte grounded into a game-ending double play.
They’re now 0-59 when trailing after eight innings.
Had Edwin Diaz not gotten out of a bases-loaded jam Friday night, the Mets would have been swept. The series doesn’t exactly inspire much confidence for the stretch run, or for the next four games of the road trip in Philadelphia. The Phillies are seven games up on the Mets in the NL East.
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