Mets fans made their feelings known before Aaron Loup could even throw his next pitch after surrendering a two-run double on Wednesday night.
The lefty reliever was called on to replace Taijuan Walker, who had cruised through six innings and thrown just 74 pitches, after two runners reached on an error and a soft single. Walker was clearly upset when Rojas came out to take the ball, and after Loup surrendered a go-ahead double to Brandon Crawford on the first pitch, Walker threw his water bottle in the dugout as the fans immediately rained down "Fire Rojas chants."
The Mets manager heard the chants, but said he didn't internalize them.
"No, no reaction," Rojas said. "I hear the fans. The fans are always shouting different things, you always hear it. But no reaction. This is baseball. We have a very passionate fanbase, and they're gonna do those things. That's just OK. It's part of the game."
Loup heard the reaction from the crowd as he tried to rebound from the Crawford double, and admitted that the response from the Citi Field faithful was tough to swallow, especially given the players' frustration amid this 2-10 stretch.
"It's tough," Loup said. "We definitely hear it. You try to drown it out and not pay attention to it as best you can, but we definitely hear it. It makes it tough. We've been struggling and not playing well, and you come home and basically get booed off the field, it definitely doesn't make it any easier."
New York has fallen seven games out of the NL East race, and with playoff hopes fading fast, the fans haven't been shy in voicing their frustration in the team's current skid. Wednesday night was just the latest in what has been a seemingly endless supply of deflating losses, and the crowd placed the most recent one on the manager.
But he is much more worried about the loss than how the crowd responded to it.
"Really tough, very tough loss," Rojas said. "Finishing the last days of august, having a really tough loss like this and now going a little bit further away in the standings. You start paying attention, and I know the guys are. I don't do it on a daily basis, I try to focus on the game of the day, but it's just a tough loss.
"Guys are frustrated. We could have had this game. We still gotta do what we need to do. Gotta regroup, come back tomorrow and give our best once again. But it's a tough one."
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
Follow WFAN on Social Media
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitch
