ST. LOUIS — It was not enough for the Mets to leave Busch Stadium on Sunday with another series loss and another troubling outing from their starting pitcher.
Before their 6-4 loss to the Cardinals was finally over, the Mets added both insult and injury.
They were left holding their breath when Robinson Cano got drilled between his right hand and wrist with Andrew Miller’s 94-mph fastball in the seventh inning. The X-rays came back negative, but Cano was forced to leave the game and was later wearing a soft cast in hopes of reducing the swelling. How it responds on Monday will determine whether he needs further testing, he said.
“It’s good,” Cano said. “Thank God it’s negative, so let’s see how it feels through the flight.”
To make matters worse, while Cano was writhing in pain, third-base umpire and crew chief Paul Emmel ruled that Cano swung on the pitch — the same determination the umpires made Saturday when Pete Alonso got hit on the hand — which fired up manager Mickey Callaway and led to his ejection after heatedly arguing the call. It was not a reviewable play, so Callaway could not ask for a challenge.
“I was shocked,” said Callaway, who was unhappy the call was made so late.
“He started his swing. Pitch hit his hands. Followed through with his swing, the ball actually went into fair territory,” Emmel said via a pool reporter. “It’s a black and white rule.”
Juan Lagares replaced Cano at the plate with an 0-2 count and struck out on one pitch. That Cano didn’t draw a hit-by-pitch came back to sting even worse a batter later, when Michael Conforto crushed a home run that could have cut the deficit to one run, but kept it to 6-4 with the solo shot.
Lagares later came up as the tying run in the ninth inning, with two outs and Alonso on first, but struck out to end it.
The Mets’ (11-10) late-inning drama came after Noah Syndergaard struggled through five ineffective innings. He gave up six runs, four earned, on eight hits and two walks as his ERA rose to 5.90 after five starts. It made Jason Vargas’ four-inning stint Friday night, when he gave up one run, the Mets’ best start of the series.
“I’ll definitely get out of it,” said Syndergaard, who got in trouble by walking the leadoff batter in the second and third innings. “But this is unacceptable and it has to be better.”
One of Amed Rosario’s two fielding errors didn’t help, extending the rally in the second inning, but Syndergaard was also hit hard before being taken out for a pinch hitter in the top of the sixth.
The Mets hit four home runs — Alonso’s revenge moon shot in the first, Syndergaard’s fly ball that deflected off Dexter Fowler’s glove and over the wall in the fourth, Cano’s first since April 6 in the fifth and Conforto’s bomb in the seventh — but all were solo blasts.
It was not enough to win the series against the Cardinals (12-9) as the Mets’ starters — projected to be the strength of the team — now own an ERA of 5.64.
“They’re going to snap out of it,” Callaway said as the Mets ended a 10-game road trip and flew back to New York to face the Phillies on Monday “We need to start snapping out of it. It’s time. They’re going to get better, but we need to snap out of it soon because we’re about to go play a tough series against a good team.”