ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Some were scolded, some were lined, some were blooped and most were grounded.
It did not seem to matter where Rays hitters placed their batted balls: Against Jose Quintana, they all found holes.
The Mets quickly found their way into a deep hole that they never could quite escape in a 10-8 loss Friday to open a series with the Rays at Tropicana Field, where the most reliable pitcher Carlos Mendoza boasts came undone.
“Really frustrating when you get that kind of support and you can’t take it,” said Quintana, who lasted just 2 ²/₃ innings while allowing eight runs on 10 hits and a walk.
The Mets (16-16), who might be good and might be bad but definitely have proven interesting, have dropped eight of 12.
They followed up a loss on a disputed throw-out at the plate and a win on a walk-off double with a game they led by three, then trailed by six, then cut the gap to two.
They launched two comeback attempts, with a four-run fifth and Brett Baty’s second homer of the game in the ninth, when they brought up Starling Marte as the tying run.
But Jason Adam struck out Marte to end a game that truly was lost with Quintana on the mound.
Quintana’s ERA rose from 3.48 to 5.20 despite the Rays batters’ average exit velocity (86.9 mph) being slower than batters had averaged in the lefty’s first six starts (89 mph).
“They found holes. They attacked, and they kept swinging,” said Quintana, who joined current pitching coach Jeremy Hefner as the only starters in team history to allow at least eight runs on at least 10 hits in fewer than three innings. “Just two hard contacts, and that’s it.
“And it’s crazy because it happened really quick.”
Of the 10 hits he allowed, none left the park. Tampa Bay turned four hits into three runs in the second before the third inning never seemed to end.
Ground ball after ground ball became hit after hit.
A single squeezed through the left side; a walk; Harold Ramirez tried to steal third base, forcing Baty to scramble to cover the base and abandon his position, which enabled Amed Rosario to sneak a single by him; an end-of-the-bat squeaker between Pete Alonso and Jeff McNeil for an infield single.
His pitch count rising, Quintana began serving up harder contact.
A sacrifice fly caught at the warning track; a roped two-run single; a smacked RBI single, which ended Quintana’s night and began a long one from the bullpen.
“Balls found holes, a lot of singles. … We just didn’t get much out of him,” said Mendoza, who got plenty out of his offense, which scored in disparate ways.
The Mets took a three-run lead in the second inning on a Baty home run that appeared to disappear.
The third baseman launched a middle-of-the-plate sinker from Aaron Civale, and Ramirez camped in fairly deep right field and awaited a ball that he couldn’t find. Ramirez threw out his arms in confusion, the ball lost somewhere in the catwalk-filled dome — before it reappeared far behind him for what was estimated to be a 378-foot homer.
“It’s tough to see up there,” said Baty, who came through with the first multi-homer game of his career. “I have no idea what happened.”
The Mets were then quiet until a four-run fifth narrowed the score to 9-7.
Marte’s sacrifice fly brought home Tyrone Taylor before back-to-back doubles from Francisco Lindor and Alonso knocked in three more.
The Rays scored a run apiece against Dedniel Nunez and Jorge Lopez, the Mets’ B-side bullpen largely pitching well, eating up 5 ¹/₃ innings and allowing the bats a chance to steal a game that Quintana already had coughed up.
The comeback could not be pulled off, the hole dug too deep on a night that Quintana essentially wrote off as unlucky rather than a true concern.
“Ball in play, most of the time it’s in a hole,” Quintana said. “I think at some point in time, I needed to change my approach.”
