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While we were mourning a CPF outage, the Mets were losing a close one to the Tigers, 4-3. The big blow for the Mets came on L.J. Mazzilli's second home run in the spring. L.J.'s spring training continues to be remarkable not just for the 1.058 OPS he's put up, but merely for the fact that he's garnered something like 16 plate appearances while not actually being a camp invitee, but regularly getting into games as a guest, moreso that a lot of actual invitees across Florida. L.J. may have, in the end, made more hay out of the WBC than anybody, taking appearances that may have otherwise gone to T.J. Rivera or Ty Kelly.
The game also feature 2 2/3 innings of shutout starting pitching from #8 starter Adam Wilk, outdueling defending Rookie of the Year (and that's an award that's never been successfully defended) Michael Fulmer, who gave up two runs on the Mazzilli homer and another one to Patrick Biondi.
All four Tiger runs were charged to Kyle Regnault in the fifth and sixth, but two runs came after Rafael Montero took over with the runners on base.
It was very much a Sunday/travel day lineup, with no expected regulars appearing and only two guys—Conforto, Flores—favored to currently even make the team. Phil Evans started at second a day after his demotion and took his disappointment out on the ball, going 2-2 with a run scored.
Taking over for Wilk and pitching an inning and 2/3 scoreless was former Brewers (and, very briefly, Reds) swingman Donovan Hand, who the team apparently signed 10 days ago, but it completely went under all of our radars.
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