SAN FRANCISCO -- Mets pitcher Sean Manaea finally took a step out of no-man’s land Thursday night, making his second appearance of the year in just the right spot to face a lot of hitters. That was good news for Manaea, not necessarily for the team.
The “right spot” that manager Carlos Mendoza hoped for was a long relief outing, preferably in a game the Mets led by a bunch. Instead, it arrived Thursday with New York down three runs in a game it would lose to the Giants, 7-2.
Manaea allowed one run in 3 2/3 innings, finishing the game to preserve the rest of the bullpen. More importantly, he lasted 74 pitches, well beyond the magic number that Mendoza had sought.
Manaea was limited to just 29 pitches over 1 1/3 innings in his lone 2026 appearance entering Thursday. Mendoza wanted to stretch Manaea to at least 50 pitches before considering him for a potential sixth-starter role the next time through the rotation. That kind of outing also would allow Manaea to throw all his pitches.
There was no such opportunity for a long reliever in all the tight games the Mets have played.
Manaea’s opportunity arose when the Giants knocked starter David Peterson out of the game in the fifth inning of a 5-2 game. Manaea allowed an inherited runner to score and surrendered a solo homer to Rafael Devers in the sixth, then got out of a bases-loaded, two-out jam in the seventh.
“It was a positive step there,” Mendoza said. “I think he was aggressive. His fastball had life, he got some swings and misses, and for him to finish the game like that and save the bullpen is huge.”
Mendoza was noncommittal about a potential rotation spot for Manaea, saying, “It was important for him to stretch out in case we make the decision when we have to. But again, there were a lot of positives from him today, not only from the workload standpoint but just in the way he threw the ball.”
Manaea also was circumspect about the chance to start.
“We’ve got five extremely talented starters, and my role right now is to help this team in the capacity that I’m doing,” he said.
Peterson allowed six runs (five earned) in 4 1/3 innings. The unearned run was due to his own error, when he dropped a flip from first baseman Mark Vientos during a three-run Giants first.
The Giants made a lot of loud contact against Peterson, including a Luis Arraez triple and a Matt Chapman double, back to back, in a three-run first. Even the sacrifice flies by Jung Hoo Lee and Harrison Bader in the third inning sent Luis Robert Jr. toward the center-field wall were hard hit. Devers added a sixth-inning homer off Manaea that gave San Francisco a 7-2 lead.
The Mets' offense failed to support their pitchers, scoring twice in 5 1/3 innings against an erratic Robbie Ray. Bo Bichette doubled home a run in the first inning and Vientos hit his first homer of the year an inning later.
Bichette has had better at-bats on the road since a 1-for-12 opening series against the Pirates that elicited boos at Citi Field three games into his Mets tenure.
He followed his double with a third-inning drive to center that Bader caught at the fence. The ball seemed headed for the top of the wall and could have gone over for a home run.
Legions of hitters have thought they had a homer in San Francisco before the big ballpark dimensions and wind turned those drives into outs. Bichette said he did not know if his ball had enough for what would have been his first homer as a Met.
“If I knew I had it,” he said with a smile, “I would have come out of the box a little differently.”
Two at-bats later, Bichette hit a rocket that turned into a double play when Giants first baseman Casey Schmitt leaped to grab it.