The boxscore wasn’t pretty by the end of Friday night for Jose Quintana.
It showed five earned runs on four hits and two walks in 6 2/3 innings pitched. Not ideal when facing a Mariners lineup that has scored the fourth fewest runs in the majors.
But the boxscore was more or less an illusion. It didn’t portray Quintana’s true start, which was golden for most of the night.
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Before entering the seventh inning, Quintana was dealing. He’d struck out seven across six innings of work, with his only mistake a two-run homer to Ryan Bliss in the second.
The Mariners only had two hits before the seventh inning. They couldn’t figure out the veteran lefty, who had entered the start on Friday with a 2.87 ERA in his last 11 starts dating back to June.
But it was one inning that soured Quintana’s night. A walk and single to begin the seventh, and then a single two batters later to the ninth-place hitter Leo Rivas. Quintana was one out away from escaping the damage, but the one softly placed single increased the deficit to 4-0.
“He pitched way better than the linescore obviously,” Carlos Mendoza said after the game. “He was probably a strike away from giving us seven innings two-run ball. He (Rivas) just got him there, the two-out single with two strikes, the nine-hole hitter.”
The bottom of the lineup did all the damage against Quintana. The eighth-hole hitter Bliss tagged Quintana with a two-run homer and the ninth-hitting Rivas drove in the other two with a single.
Jose Quintana has retired 11 Mariners in a row! pic.twitter.com/9GOUT9puvN
— SNY (@SNYtv) August 10, 2024
Afterward, the Mets left it in the hands of Adam Ottavino, who walked two more batters and allowed a two-out single to Cal Raleigh. Quintana was charged with one more run when Rivas scored.
The start will be remembered by the boxscore. But we can at least appreciate it in the present for what it was. A gutsy battle from a veteran, who gave the Mets a chance to win the majority of the night.
Realistically, if the Mets had scored runs and were tied or ahead, Quintana isn’t in that game. Mendoza turns it over to his bullpen and bridges the ball to former Mariner Edwin Díaz. But that wasn’t the case. Instead, he trusted Quintana to get three more outs for a Mets team that’s played eight consecutive games in four different time zones.
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