It didn't play out the way the form suggested it should. New York scored a run in the 4th and 2 more in the 7th, and that was enough of a cushion to hold up in a game where nobody's offense ever got comfortable.
The Rays had won the first 3 of a set against the Padres and gone 1-1 with Detroit before Monday, a run that had them looking like one of the better teams in the league on paper. The Mets, by contrast, had gone 0-2 against Milwaukee and taken just 1 of 3 from Houston, with their only recent bright spot a 6-2 win over the Astros. None of that recent shape mattered much once the game actually started.
Tampa Bay's injury list hits the corners of the roster hard — Fraley and Gavin Lux both out in the outfield, and a bullpen missing 3 key relief arms in Jax, Sulser and Uceta. New York's list skews toward the pen too, which made every close inning in this one a little shakier than the box score alone suggests.
Tampa Bay is still sitting at 82-54 and very much in the thick of things, so one flat night against a team playing out the string isn't changing the bigger picture. For the Mets, at 61-76, it's just a night where the pitching held up long enough for a thin lineup to make it stand.