NEW YORK -- It was well into the 2 o’clock hour when the Mets’ plane touched down at JFK on Thursday morning. After commuting to their homes in Long Island City, Manhattan and beyond, the Mets had time for a few hours’ sleep and a return trip to Citi Field, where they were scheduled to take on the Nationals in their 1:10 p.m. ET home opener.
Whether that affected them in a 4-0 loss is impossible to say for sure; the Nationals, who arrived in New York several hours before the Mets, mustered only one hit themselves until the ninth. But Stephen Strasburg outdueled Noah Syndergaard, who had traveled ahead of the team, striking out nine Mets over 6 2/3 innings. On this day, that was difference enough.
“Just because you get in late the night before,” outfielder Brandon Nimmo said, “doesn’t mean the other team’s going to take it easy on you.”
Like most of his teammates, Nimmo did not put his head on his pillow until after 4 a.m. He estimated he slept for about five hours, waking up in time to leave his apartment around 10 a.m.
Once at the office, Nimmo was tasked with leading off against Strasburg, one of baseball’s best pitchers, who peppered the bottom half of the zone with offspeed pitches. Nimmo struck out in his first at-bat, and was hardly alone. The Mets did not record a hit off Strasburg until the fifth. The top four hitters in their lineup finished 0-for-14 with seven strikeouts.
Still, the Mets kept things close until the ninth thanks to Syndergaard, who departed Miami on Wednesday, picked up the keys to an apartment he shares with Robert Gsellman, and turned in early for “a solid night’s sleep.” Facing the Nationals for the second time in six days, Syndergaard allowed a run in the second inning on two walks, a wild pitch and a Wilmer Difo safety squeeze, then another on a Victor Robles leadoff homer in the sixth. He permitted no other hits, hitting 100 mph on the radar gun and striking out six.
It was Syndergaard who complained publicly about the Mets’ travel schedule at the end of Spring Training, when the team bused from Port St. Lucie, Fla., across the state to Sarasota; flew to Syracuse, N.Y., for a workout; then went onward to Washington without stopping home. That prevented several Mets from moving into new apartments, or even from accessing keys to their homes until the wee hours Thursday.
The Marlins did offer the Mets a one-hour reprieve, scheduling Wednesday’s series finale an hour earlier than usual. But players learned late in the game that Dominic Smith and one other Met had been scheduled to undergo random MLB-sanctioned drug tests. The problem? Smith had no urgent need to use the bathroom, so his teammates waited close to an hour while he chugged water “until my bladder was ready to go.”
The charter finally departed Miami International Airport at 11:32 p.m. on Wednesday, arriving at JFK at 2:14 a.m. Players scattered quickly from there, trying to rest as much as possible. Some, such as Nimmo, reliever Seth Lugo and manager Mickey Callaway, were also battling illness.
“This game has been on our minds for a whole week,” Smith said. “We knew it was going to be tough. We knew with the tight turnaround, we got in late. But that’s not an excuse. We’re professionals at the end of the day.”
Smith nearly had a chance to change the narrative in the seventh inning, when Callaway called him to pinch-hit against Strasburg. But the Nationals countered with lefty Matt Grace, prompting the Mets to replace Smith with J.D. Davis, who struck out looking. Mets hitters fanned 14 times in total, going scoreless in their home opener for the first time since 1992.
In the ninth, the Nationals scored two runs off Lugo and Tim Peterson to put the game all but out of reach, leaving the Mets grasping for nothing more than a decent night’s sleep.
“I know everybody’s happy that the day’s over, because it’s been a long 12, 13 hours,” Smith said. “Everybody gets to get home, move into their apartments, relax, kick their feet up. I know we’re all happy about that. And we’ll be back Saturday ready to go."