3 things we learned from the Mets series win against the Cardinals

The New York Mets continued winning series, taking two out of three games from the St. Louis Cardinals on the road this week. We continue to learn more about this team as the young season begins to grow older.

The Mets are consistent in many ways

The Mets won the first six series of the season for the first time in franchise history, and it does not seem to matter the difficulty or place of the opponent. They’ve lost exactly one game in each series.

The Mets are consistently aggressive on the basepaths, overaggressive at times, as evidenced in the sixth inning in Wednesday’s game as the Mets made two outs on the basepaths while trying to get an extra base.

The Mets are consistently trying to get on base, and the pressure they applied by getting on base contributed to much of their offense in this series, and not relying on the home run ball as much, which I wrote about specifically in Pete Alonso's case earlier this week. The Mets' only home run was a ninth inning blast from Brandon Nimmo on Monday night.

The Mets’ knowledge of the strike zone this season is impeccable, as they are statistically the toughest team in baseball to strike out, and they consistently put the ball in play. Mets pitchers struck out 31 Cardinals batters in the series, while Mets hitters struck out just 20 times.

Save for Carlos Carrasco’s rough outing in the series finale on Wednesday, the Mets’ starting pitchers have consistently been going deep into games while giving quality innings at the same time. Max Scherzer pitched seven scoreless innings in a no-decision on Monday. Chris Bassitt tossed six scoreless frames of his own, while recording the win on Tuesday.

The Mets are a team that has each other’s backs

The Mets’ hit by pitch epidemic continued as Mets batters got hit by five pitches in the three games at Busch Stadium. Pete Alonso got plunked in the head by Kodi Whitley in the eighth inning on Tuesday night, and the Mets immediately came out of the dugout, seemingly almost ready to charge further.

This incident drew blunt postgame comments from both Alonso’s wife Haley on Instagram on how the league valued velocity over artistry in developing their pitchers and from Chris Bassitt, claiming the league does not care about the players’ health or the quality of the balls used in games.

The benches cleared again in the bottom of the eighth inning of Wednesday’s game, where after St. Louis’ Genesis Cabrera hit J.D. Davis in the ankle in the top of the eighth inning, Mets reliever Yoan Lopez threw high and inside at Arenado in the bottom of the inning, causing the benches to empty. Lopez was so not in the wrong in this situation as the pitch wasn’t as bad as the one that struck Davis, and the ball didn’t even hit Arenado. But Arenado decided to play the victim card, and it resulted in him being ejected from the game.

This series further tested the Mets’ resolve as things go against them, and this series proved the Mets are willing to fight for what they believe in and for their teammates.