Daniel Vogelbach stood at his locker after Wednesday’s 10-8 loss to the Astros and was immediately asked about his recent hot streak at the plate.
Over his last seven games, the left-handed slugger is 7-for-24 (.292) with two home runs and seven RBI, including three hits and driving in three runs on Wednesday. But the 30-year-old didn’t want to make Wednesday about him, he was visibly frustrated — as the rest of the Mets were — after the team failed to win their sixth consecutive series.
“This isn’t about me hitting it’s about us and us trying to win games,” Vogelbach said after the game. “Today in the game we could have easily laid down when we got punched but we punched back. We just ended up short against a really good team.”
The Mets scored eight runs, which would normally be enough to down any opponent but the combination of starter Taylor Megill and the bullpen gave up 10 runs to put a damper on what was a pretty good offensive outing for the Mets.
And Vogelbach was at the center of it all, picking up three of the team’s 10 hits Wednesday. Since the team-imposed “break” after the Atlanta Brave series in early June, Vogelbach has returned to the lineup with at least one hit in four of those five games.
The Florida native said he’s just “getting back to being myself” and that he always believed in himself and that he was just in a funk.
But even with Vogelbach’s hot bat, the Mets continue to lose. They’ve fallen to a season-worst six games below .500 and are now seven games out of a Wild Card spot.
“Baseball’s hard. It’ll try all it can to make you want to quit and give in, that’s why not everyone can do it.” Vogelbach said when asked if he’s surprised by this bad stretch for the Mets. “We’re not going to be those people and we’re going to stick together and get out of it. We’re going to go on a winning streak, I wish I could tell you when but I truly believe it’s going to happen, and I know we’ll get back to where everyone in here thinks we should be.”
When asked what’s missing from this team that can allow them to win ball games, Vogelbach said that they don’t know but he believes this team has the right people to weather this storm and turn it around.
“I know for a fact it’s not a lack of effort or lack of want,” he said. “You’ll see every single person here trying to make a change instead of waiting for it and that’s a credit to the people here and I truly believe it’s going to change. We’re going to go on a streak and we’ll be able to talk about how we turned things around. I just wish I could tell you when. We have an off day and I promise we’re going to go into Philly and we’re going to try and get that winning streak to start game one.”
The Mets start a three-game series with their division rival Phillies on Friday. The Phillies series from May 30-June 1 was the last series the Mets won and it’s also the last time the team had a winning streak longer than two games.
However, this isn’t the same Phillies team. Philadelphia is 7-3 over their last 10 games and three games over .500 so it Vogelbach’s proclamation of a winning streak were to come true this weekend, they’ll have to play much, much better.