Journey of the 23rd Unicorn

The Unicorn Score Monitor went on high alert in the middle of the eighth inning Monday afternoon after the Mets increased their lead over the Nationals to 15-0. That score rang a bell for not having rung a bell in my head, a repository that also serves as the unofficial institutional memory of New York Mets baseball. A quick Stathead search confirmed the Mets had indeed never won a game by a score of 15-0. Hence, a Unicorn Score, a final tally by which the Mets have won once and only once in a regular-season affair, was considered in sight.

While Brandon Nimmo deserved kudos for busting out with a nine-RBI day (that’s some busting out) and tying Carlos Delgado’s club record for most runs driven in a single game, I wasn’t nearly as excited by his burst of productivity as I was by the prospect of seeing the Mets win with a combination of runs scored and runs allowed that was unprecedented in franchise history. Prior to Monday, the Mets had posted only 22 Unicorn Scores in 64 seasons. These things with the horn in their forehead don’t come around very often.

All reliever Jose Ureña — who checked in as the 1,262nd Met overall — had to do in the eighth and ninth was not give up any runs, something he hadn’t done in the seventh, something Max Kranick hadn’t done in the sixth, something Griffin Canning didn’t do over the first five innings. Canning guarded a close game, leaving after the Mets had built a 3-0 lead. Kranick had the luxury of pitching with a 6-0 cushion. Once that advantage had elevated to 11-0 (Nimmo’s second homer, a grand slam, assuring all but the most doomsaying “they can still blow this” ledgedwellers they could come back inside), it became Ureña’s game for the duration. At 15-0, journeyman Jose was on a mission he didn’t know about.

Bag us a Unicorn.

About three seconds after I realized what was at stake, Ureña gave up a leadoff home run, and 15-0 slid off the table. We’d had only one 15-1 victorious final in our history, which meant if everything held as was, we’d be looking at Uniclone Score, or the clone of a Unicorn Score. Uniclones are intriguing as possibilities if the Unicorns they’re replicating are old enough. This one went back to June 6, 1992, a night Bobby Bonilla wished to fill the Pirates with regret for letting him walk. Maybe for that one evening he did. Bonilla drove in four at Three Rivers, while Todd Hundley and Chico Walker each knocked in three; they all homered. A 33-year-old Unicorn Score might deserve an encore by now. Only eight Unicorn Scores in the Met annals are older.

“New York Groove” is fine, but some days demand a different celebratory song.

But why clone when you can create? Why waste this golden creation opportunity? At 15-1, Ureña was instructed (by me, telepathically) to give up not one more run, but two or three. The Mets winning by a score of 15-2 wouldn’t do anybody any good, given that the Mets had previously put four 15-2 wins in their storied books. I mean, yeah, they’d have a win, but I was pretty sure they were gonna have that, anyway…even after those two six-run leads dissipated Sunday.

Ureña did and didn’t help me out. With one out, he gives up a solo homer to Luis Garcia to make it 15-2. No help. But then he continues to struggle, which is working to the Unicorn’s advantage. Listen, I wish Jose good luck in future outings, but he’s not gonna stick around after this game. He’s here because A.J. Minter is on the IL, and he’ll be back at Syracuse to make room for Brandon Waddell to start against Arizona. Just give the rest of the bullpen a blow in this quintessential mopup appearance and, if you can find it in your heart, give up one or two more runs, because the Mets have never won by scores of 15-3 or 15-4.

Grisly details aren’t necessary, except to say Ureña got the score to 15-4. Perfect. Now get a third out. And he does. But he doesn’t, because the third out, on a grounder, gets overturned, as a) umpires are terrible calling plays at first base; and b) video review is so ingrained in baseball’s culture now that no manager is willing to let an abysmal call stand, not even in the get-it-over-with portion of a blowout.

Nor should they…unless it’s messing with my Unicorn Score Monitoring.

Given an extra at-bat in the home eighth, the Nationals churn out another run to make it 15-5. That is not Unicorn territory, though I must confess I wasn’t wholly disappointed, for the only 15-5 score the Mets had ever won by came at the tail end of the 1964 season, the third-oldest Unicorn in captivity. Mets 15 Cardinals 5 on October 3, 1964, was a huge deal in its day because it was throwing a Redbird Wrench into the dizzy three-way race for the NL pennant. The Mets, who to that point in their existence had only watched others contend for a flag, were legitimately playing spoiler during the ’64 campaign’s final weekend. They had won the night before by a 1-0 score (we’ve won by a final of 1-0 142 times), and now they pounded St. Louis, and if somehow they kept it up, a three-way tie among the Cards, the Phils, and the Reds was possible, and Casey Stengel’s bumblers straightening up and flying right would have been the chaos culprits.

Except the Cardinals won on the final Sunday, and the Mets’ spoiling was reduced to a footnote. Yet it was on my mind when the eighth inning ended at Mets 15 Nationals 5. I guessed I could live with a Uniclone Score packing that kind of “first time in 61 years” precedent.

The most discerning of Mets fans know to raise their hands to heaven when a Unicorn Score is in sight.

Ah, but there was still one more inning to go. The Mets, as the road team, of course would bat, and it was the kind of day when the Mets batting augured offense, especially late. Remember, it was 3-0 through five, when the primary storylines were Francisco Alvarez (run-scoring double) and Jeff McNeil (sac fly and solo homer) honing themselves as everyday weapons. Nimmo didn’t get going earnest until his three-run shot in the sixth. Then came the seventh, with Brandon’s grand slam and fourth through seventh RBI. In the middle of the all-day onslaught, Francisco Lindor managed to get himself hit by pitches twice, as in twice in the seventh inning. Like Nimmo tying Delgado, Lindor tied Frank Thomas. Thomas got hit twice in the same inning on April 29, 1962. The Mets scored seven times in that frame en route to their first shutout triumph, whitewashing the Phillies, 8-0 (we’ve won by a final of 8-0 32 times).

Therefore, after two in the second, one in the fifth, three in the sixth, five in the seventh, and four in the eighth, it was fair to infer 15-5 might not be a done deal. And when it was announced that now pitching for the Washington Nationals would be lucky No. 13, Amed Rosario, you figured window panes in the vicinity of the Navy Yard were in danger.

Rosario was our second Old Friend™ of the day. Trevor Williams started for the Nats and gave up the Mets’ first five runs. Three relievers followed before Davey Martinez (who was challenging calls in the eighth) went into white flag mode and tabbed our former shortstop as his next pitcher. If you pressed your ear to the speaker, you could hear a Unicorn licking its lips.

Three batters and not too many more miles per hour into the ninth inning, it was Mets 16 Nationals 5, nobody out. I needed the Mets to keep going, as 16-5 had been accomplished three times in franchise history, and I don’t have a cute name for scores registered more than twice. Also, we had the matter of Nimmo awaiting another turn at bat. You figured he could break his temporary tie with Delgado simply by making eye contact with Amed. All Mark Vientos, who was hitting in front of Brandon, had to avoid was hitting into a triple play (which we learned during this series you can do without actually doing) or clearing the bases on his own.

Alas, you can’t blame Mark for muscling up on a Rosario delivery that measured 52 MPH and sending it over the center field fence. On a feast day for the entire Met lineup, everybody eats. Three RBIs on that swing for Vientos. Three for McNeil in all. Luisangel Acuña went 3-for-6 in the nine-hole with a ribbie. Jesse Winker and Pete Alonso drove in one apiece. The aforementioned Alvarez RBI double happened in the second, but it was technically part of this same game. Brandon couldn’t have all the fun himself. He took his cut at Amed’s speed-limit stuff and couldn’t add to his ledger. Dude had to settle for 4-for-6, four runs scored, and those nine ribeye steaks. Now that he’s gotten hot, let’s hope Brandon doesn’t abandon baseball to open a butcher shop.

Eyes on the prize here. Vientos’s three-run blast made the score Mets 19 Nationals 5. It stayed that way heading to the bottom of the ninth. That Unicorn I’d been nurturing was ready to enter the world fully grown. All Jose Ureña had to do now was not give up exactly three runs in the bottom of the ninth. We’d already won a 19-8 game, in 1990. We’d never won a 19-5 game, or a 19-6 game, or a 19-7 game, or anything from 19-9 to 19-18.

Tracking data of which nobody else is more than vaguely cognizant, you mean?

When was the last time you asked your closer du jour — having come on to start the seventh, Ureña was pursuing a save opportunity — to go ahead and give up one, two, or four-plus runs in the ninth, just not three? Maybe you had never done that, but that was all I wanted from Quadruple-A Jose. Let me see you nail down this save that itself would be unique. No other Met penman had ever earned an S in the box score while giving up as many as the five runs this righty had surrendered in the eighth.

In the ninth, Jose Ureña proved himself worthy of inclusion in any exploration of the Unicorn Score oeuvre. He gave up a walk with one out, but nothing more, and when he fanned Dylan Crews, the Unicorn came galloping onto the field at Nationals Park, visible to anybody seeking a sighting. Mets win, 19-5, the 23rd Unicorn Score in Mets history, the first in two years, the sixth in the past decade, which is as long as I’ve been tracking them. This doesn’t count the 14-9 Unicorn Score of August 22, 2015, because it was cloned the very next night and, therefore, is no longer in captivity.

No worries, however, as the twin 14-9s are living happily at the Uniclone Score Preserve upstate in the company of the ten other scores the Mets have won by only twice. They’re taken very good care of, treated regularly to ribeye steak dinners that are put on the tab of a surprisingly accommodating Bobby Bo every First of July.

MET UNICORN SCORES (Regular Season)
19-5, at Washington, April 28, 2025
17-6, at Oakland, April 14, 2023
18-1, at Buffalo vs Toronto, September 11, 2020
24-4, at Philadelphia, August 16, 2018 (1st Game)
17-0, at Citi Field vs Philadelphia, September 25, 2016
16-7, at Philadelphia, August 24, 2015
12-7, at New York (AL), May 13, 2014
16-9, at Detroit, June 29, 2011
14-6, at Citi Field vs Detroit, June 22, 2010
13-10, at Shea Stadium vs Washington, September 10, 2008
13-9, at Los Angeles (NL), July 19, 2007
13-7, at Chicago (NL), July 16, 2006
The Mets also beat the Dodgers, 13-7, in Game Three of the 2015 NLDS
17-3, at Shea Stadium vs Florida, July 8, 2006 (2nd Game)
18-4, at Arizona, August 24, 2005
15-8, at Shea Stadium vs Chicago (NL), April 23, 2000
15-1, at Pittsburgh, June 6, 1992
19-8, at Chicago (NL), June 12, 1990
23-10, at Chicago (NL), August 16, 1987
16-13, at Atlanta, July 4-5, 1985
20-6, at Atlanta, August 7, 1971
15-5, at St. Louis, October 3, 1964
19-1, at Chicago (NL), May 26, 1964
13-12, at the Polo Grounds vs Cincinnati, May 12, 1963 (2nd Game)