Be Not Afraid

We all love a dramatic game, but there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with winning 6-1 — particularly when that margin of victory comes the night after a gut-punch loss.

Wednesday night’s game was the Griffin Canning and Pete Alonso show, what with Canning’s near-flawless pitching (six innings, three skinny singles allowed) and the Polar Bear homering twice and driving in five.

Canning has never looked better as a Met, which had to be extra sweet considering he’s a California kid, had seen his star fall as a member of the little-brother team in town, and been pummeled in his only other Dodger Stadium start.

Canning kept the Dodgers off-balance all night, with a number of ABs standing out as showcases for his craft. In the first inning, facing Mookie Betts, he put four pitches in more or less the same location, down and in, but kept Betts off-balance by switching between his four-seamer, change-up and slider, culminating in a strikeout.

In the second inning, Canning simply dismantled poor Michael Conforto, who got a big one-year deal from the Dodgers that’s going miserably so far. (The Dodger Stadium crowds have been surprisingly gentle; in New York Conforto would have been booed back to Syracuse or into an asylum by now.)

And then the piece of resistance, as my late grandmother liked to phrase it: Canning vs. Ohtani in the bottom of the fifth. Recall that at this point the Mets led 3-0, which is perilously little against the Dodgers’ carnivorous lineup. Canning started his former teammate off with five straight sliders — a pitch he hadn’t shown him in previous ABs — and you could see the best hitter on the planet trying to regroup. (And possibly wondering, “Where was this Griffin Canning in Anaheim?”) Canning then switched from the outside of the plate to the inside, and from slider to change-up; Ohtani was frozen and had no chance.

Extra credit in the pitching department goes to Jose Castillo, another Mets reclamation project and one that’s yielded excellent results so far. In the seventh Castillo yielded a one-out double to Andy Pages (a dangerous hitter who somehow gets lost in this lineup) and hit Conforto with a pitch, bringing Dalton Rushing up as the tying run. Jeremy Hefner came out to the mound to unplug Castillo and plug him back in; the reliever responded by erasing Rushing and the loathsome Kiké Hernandez, fanning both on six pitches.

And then there was Alonso.

The Mets got off to a fast start against Tony Gonsolin — always welcome but particularly gratifying with the taste of Tuesday’s defeat still in the mouth. Gonsolin hit Francisco Lindor in the foot, then watched Kiké turn a Brandon Nimmo double-play grounder into an error. Nimmo stole second, a Juan Soto groundout brought in Lindor, and then Alonso demolished a first-pitch slider for a 3-0 lead.

That was fun, but the Polar Bear outdid himself in the eighth against luckless newcomer Ryan Loutos, redirecting a middle-middle sinker 447 feet into the pavilion. The Dodgers’ reactions were priceless: Behind the plate Rushing flipped his hands up in consternation; Loutos’ hands went to his knees before the ball cleared the infield; and Freddie Freeman stared into the void as Alonso trotted happily around the bases mugging and gesturing.

That was more than sufficient, making the ninth-inning homer surrendered by Ryne Stanek a cosmetic blemish. The Mets have now claimed the season series regardless of what happens in a couple of hours, and they’ve delivered a critical message we needed to hear after last October: We can play with these guys. Be not afraid.