The Mets have played plenty of bad baseball this season, and Ron Darling sounded tired of watching it from the SNY booth.
The 1986 World Series champion pitcher ripped into left-hander David Peterson and what he believed to be a less-than-satisfactory reprimand to potentially come from the Mets coaching staff after the starting pitcher failed to back up a play at the plate in the sixth inning of Tuesday night’s 7-2 loss to the Reds at Citi Field.
The blunder, after Bo Bichette made a wild throw home as JJ Bleday scored, allowed Tyler Stephenson, who doubled on the play, to move to third on the throwing error.
“I don’t understand it,” Darling said on the broadcast. “It really tells me that coaches really don’t have as much influence as the players as they think they have because someone should rip someone at some point. But they don’t because they don’t want to upset anyone. You have to back up bases every single time.”
The tough critique left an almost surprised play-by-play man, Gary Cohen, asking if Darling believed it would be addressed after the game “at all.”
Darling didn’t let up.
“It might be, but not addressed the way it should be addressed, because if it was addressed, Gary, it wouldn’t happen,” he said. “It happens every game. We just don’t point it out.”
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza did tell reporters after the game that he would address the mistake with Peterson, who could be moving to a bullpen role with Sean Manaea starting to pitch more effectively as of late. Manaea allowed one run on three hits and fanned six in three innings of work.
“It can’t happen. Obviously, he knows that,” Mendoza said of Peterson’s mistake. “There’s no excuses for it. I haven’t talked to him about it, but obviously, there’s going to be a conversation. He knows he made a mistake.”
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Peterson has a 5.57 ERA after allowing six runs on 11 hits Tuesday night as the Mets dropped their fifth straight game to fall to 22-33, 15 games out of first place.
