Paul Blackburn continues to struggle since moving back into the Mets’ rotation.
The veteran right-hander was knocked around by the Braves for the second straight outing on Monday night.
As was the case during their meeting last week, Atlanta jumped on Blackburn early as they pushed a man into scoring position just three pitches into the game, but he was helped out by a heads-up play from Jeff McNeil.
He wasn’t as lucky in the second, as the leadoff man reached and quickly advanced to second again, but he was able to limit the damage to just one run on a sacrifice fly thanks to a Juan Soto sliding catch.
Ronald Acuña Jr. then led off the third with a solo shot, and after a double and two walks that loaded the bases with no outs, Blackburn settled down and was able to escape with just one more tally on the board.
He finally put together a clean inning his next time out, but was unable to finish the fifth.
Austin Riley crushed a triple high off the center field fence and Sean Murphy drew a two-out walk to chase him from the contest, but José Buttó entered and was able to close his line without further damage.
Overall, Blackburn allowed three runs on six hits while walking three three over 4.2 innings of work.
“I feel like I made some adjustments from the last time facing them,” he said. “I hung the curveball to Acuña and he hit it out, but other than that I felt like I made some pretty good pitches and really battled out there.”
Buttó and the rest of the Mets’ bullpen did a tremendous job keeping this one close behind Blackburn, but this was another game during this tough stretch where they were forced to take on a heavy workload.
It marked the fifth straight contest the Mets’ starter was unable to finish five innings.
“Everything is magnified when you’re struggling,” Blackburn said. “Every night everyone is going out there giving their best shot — obviously guys don’t want to go four innings, five innings. Guys would love to do what [David] Peterson’s been doing for us.
“It’s just come in, day-by-day, continue to work and sooner or later the tide is going to turn.”
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