No Pitch, All Swish

Well, this was bound to happen. Luis Robert Jr. hit two homers and drove in three runs against his old team last night as Mets doubled up on the White Sox, 10-5. No pitching, and two hitters providing eight strikeouts between them. Luis Castillo gave up four runs on eight (!) hits and a walk in just 2.2 innings of work. None of the three pitchers who followed, including scored-upon-again Huascar Brazoban, provided anything close to relief. Starting pitching, or the lack thereof, is a problem that needs to be addressed yesterday, if not sooner. Ditto the feast-or-famine nature of the Sox offense. Two homeruns, from Braden Montgomery and Tristan Peters, were nice, the 1-for-10 performance with runners in scoring position and the thirteen strikeouts, not so much. Which brings us to the four-strikeouts’ twins, Munetaka Murakami and Colson Montgomery. The one has a .225 BA, the other .215. Last night, Murakami looked more zombie at the plate than hitter while Montgomery continued his distressing habit of taking hittable pitches for a called strike three; he did it twice, once with the bases loaded. Short-term, this has to be fixed to the point both hitters can put up a .230 BA at least. Long-term, the front office has to decide whether either or both of these players is worth building around. I honestly can’t answer one way or another.