Game Recap: Gee Not Sharp, Mets Shutout 8-0

This was supposed to be a night where Dillon Gee was able to shut down a depleted Milwaukee offense and New York would walk away with a two-game sweep. However, that didn’t happen. Gee surrendered a career-high in runs for the second time in three weeks, and the Mets got shut out for only the second time this season, but not without a little drama.

The Mets starter only last 5.1 innings while giving up those seven earned runs, with a four-run sixth sending him to the showers for good. Gee gave up eight hits, walked one, and struck out four batters while giving up two home runs, both to Travis Ishikawa. This poor outing was perplexing for Gee, who felt that he had great stuff last night:

"“I felt great today, really. I don’t know, man. I’m at a loss for words. Like I said, I felt good out there. I felt like I made a lot of good pitches. In my mind, I only made a few mistakes.”"

Those few mistakes that he made led him to an earlier exit than he would have liked, and Gee has now compiled a 6.75 ERA in his last

five starts, while allowing three or fewer runs only twice in 2012. However, most of the excitement and drama came after the game was already out of hand. D.J. Carrasco gave up a line drive home run to Rickie Weeks in the seventh inning, then proceeded to drill Ryan Braun with a pitch in the very next at-bat. Carrasco and Collins were immediately ejected by the Home Plate umpire, without warning. On his way out, Collins decided to protect his third baseman from any type of retaliation by taking David Wright out of the lineup.

Wright was visibly upset in the dugout as him and Collins were arguing about him coming out of the game, but Collins was adamant that New York can’t afford to lost Wright for the better part of a week because of a hit by pitch, depending on where it may hit him. Being the leader that it is, David proclaimed that if anyone should be getting hit, it should be him. After the game, Wright was asked about the heated exchange, and he said that he was obviously not happy about being taken out of the game, but him and Terry are fine and there are no problems.

Despite winning seven of their last ten games and having their offense clicking, the Mets could not muster much from Brewers starter Zack Greinke, who went seven shutout innings, giving up five hits, no walks, and seven strikeouts on the way to his fourth win of the year. The New York offense could only gather six hits as a team, but David Wright continued his hot hitting with a double and single, raising his league-leading batting average to .408. Lucas Duda and Daniel Murphy got registered one hit a piece, and Mike Baxter collected two hits of his own after he entered the game as part of a double switch.

Outside of Carrasco, the bullpen didn’t give up any runs to make the loss worse than it already was; Manny Acosta came in and threw 0.2 innings before giving way to Carrasco in the seventh, and Ramon Ramirez put together 2.2 shutout innings while giving up only two hits and striking out five. The loss drops the Mets season record to 20-16, putting them 2.5 games behind the division-leading Atlanta Braves.

Probable Pithers tonight:

The Mets begin their second straight two-game series at Citi Field, kicking off their first meeting of the year with the Cincinnati Reds. Mike Leake (0-5, 7.11 ERA) is looking to break his season long slump against Johan Santana (1-2, 2.92 ERA) and the Amazins. First pitch is scheduled for 7:10pm.

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