Diamondbacks swept by Mets, drop 6th game in a row

The Arizona Diamondbacks continued their struggles on the road as the team dropped their sixth straight game and lost to the New York Mets by a score of 4-2 on Sunday.

The Mets scored a pair of runs to open the game in the third inning as shortstop Francisco Lindor hit a sacrifice fly to left field to bring in catcher James McCann to score.

Later on in the inning, right fielder Michael Conforto hit an RBI-single to drive in pitcher Jacob deGrom.

“Little things matter to me,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said via Zoom. “They matter to this organization. It’s one of my sort of values that I instill inside of this organization on a daily basis, and we’re not doing a lot of little things right right now.”

The D-backs would later score their first run in the fifth inning as shortstop Nick Ahmed grounded into a double play and left fielder David Peralta scored from third.

Arizona starting pitcher Riley Smith went four complete innings as he allowed four hits, struck out one and gave up two earned runs on 51 pitches (32 strikes).

Lovullo replaced Smith early on in the game as Arizona had runners on the corners in the top of the fifth inning.The D-backs manager brought in Christian Walker to pinch hit, but the first baseman would go on to strike out.

“Riley did a fantastic job,” Lovullo said. “He was attacking the zone.

“I did something that was totally out of the box today. But I felt like with their starting pitcher and his ability to shut teams down, we were going to have an opportunity or two and that was going to be one of them. So I kind of sold out to put somebody out to break the game open and it didn’t happen. But up until that point, Riley was fantastic.”

As the sixth inning approached, deGrom took himself out of the game for precautionary reasons as he was experiencing right side tightness.The right-hander finished the day with six strikeouts, one hit and one earned run in five innings of work.

Later on in the seventh inning, Arizona third baseman Eduardo Escobar was ejected from the game after arguing pitch locations with home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez.

A missed call leads to Escobar and Lovullo being ejected. pic.twitter.com/RXLyIQL04l

— Bally Sports Arizona (@BallySportSAZ) May 9, 2021

As soon as Escobar was ejected, Lovullo came running to defend his third baseman but was tossed from the game as well.

“I pride myself on staying in control,” Lovullo said.”But every once in a while I have my moments where my emotions spike. And I think Eduardo is the same way, everybody has human instinct to show that frustration.”

Arizona would add on another run in the form of an Asdrúbal Cabrera solo home run in the 8th inning to bring the Diamondbacks within two.

However, the Mets bullpen would hold on to give New York the victory and sweep the three-game series.

“Obviously we’re frustrated,” catcher Stephen Vogt said via Zoom. “Obviously losing six games going on a road trip where you don’t run away with any wins, it’s really frustrating.

“We didn’t pitch like we know we can, we didn’t play defense like we know we can, we didn’t hit like we know we can. So obviously, everybody in the room is very frustrated.”

Despite Arizona’s losing record over the last several games, Vogt went onto say that the team still believes in themselves and described the mood in the locker room as “frustrated — not down.”

UP NEXT

With their east coast road trip now behind them, the Diamondbacks will look to bounce back at Chase Field on Monday against the Miami Marlins as Luke Weaver gets the start for Arizona.

First pitch is at 6:40 p.m. Catch all the action on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.