The Mets fell behind in the fifth inning Sunday night, as Matt Chapman [1] launched a second home run off Kodai Senga [2]. That made the score 3-2 Giants with 12 outs left for making up the deficit.
Funny what a six-game winning streak will do for you. “We’ll get ’em,” I assured my mother, and to my mild surprise I realized that I meant it.
And then the Mets proceeded to go out and get ’em.
It wasn’t as simple as me walking in my mom’s door, uttering this declaration and the Mets making it so (I’m not that good), but it was pretty close.
Ronny Mauricio [3] led off the top of the seventh against San Francisco’s Randy Rodriguez [4], whose 0.82 ERA didn’t necessarily suggest confidence, to say nothing of hubris. Rodriguez’s second pitch was a slider in on Mauricio’s hands — not a bad pitch by any stretch. Mauricio showed off his uncanny bat speed by getting around on it and his easy power carried it out over the wall and into McCovey Cove, where I was glad to see it was scooped up by a kayaker and not the hedge-fund guy zooming around on some kind of Jetsons mini-hydrofoil. (If said guy is actually a tinkerer who heads a non-profit for removing microplastic from the ocean, well, my apologies.)
Mauricio may be wearing another team’s uniform by the weekend, and that might turn out to be a good deal for the Mets. But it might also be one we rue as bitterly as, say, Javy Baez for Pete Crow-Armstrong [5]. (Ouch!) Mauricio has turned heads this year, mine most definitely included. The bat speed and power are rare gifts, but he’s also shored up his defense and cut down on the chasing that many thought would keep him from being a front-line MLB player. He finished Sunday 4-for-4, with a pair of doubles and a single in addition to the homer, and if you’ll forgive a bit of sabermetrics jargon, that shit will work.
Mauricio’s transformation of a baseball into a submersible tied the game. An understandably piqued Rodriguez then used his deadly slider to erase Brandon Nimmo [6] and Francisco Lindor [7], but left a fastball in the middle of the plate to Juan Soto [8], who clubbed it into the left-field stands to give the Mets the lead.
Newcomer Gregory Soto [9] looked good in his Mets debut, showing no nerves as Carlos Mendoza [10] started constructing the new bridge to Edwin Diaz [11]. Reed Garrett [12] and Brooks Raley [13] got the Mets to the ninth, with back-to-back Mauricio-Nimmo doubles offering an insurance run.
Which turned out to be a good idea, as Diaz was shaky for a second straight day, loading the bases with one out on walks sandwiched around an HBP. The tying run was a single away, with a woeful walkoff too close for comfort, and Willy Adames and Chapman due up.
Diaz, as he often does, seemed to awaken to his peril and snap into focus. He retired Adames on three fastballs up in the zone, all looking and also all strikes. He then stayed with the fastball and the upper bounds of the strike zone against Chapman, putting the fourth pitch of the AB up on Chapman’s hands. Chapman committed, couldn’t get around on the pitch, and the Mets had won their seventh straight [14] and completed a three-game sweep.*
Had it all the way, right? At least I’d thought so. It’s nice to be right on occasion.
* Tip of the cap to the woman in Mets garb spotted in the stands who’d brought along a full-size broom as a celebration accessory. Beyond the fear of waving a red flag in the faces of the baseball gods, I don’t think I’d want to be the guy lugging around a large broom after my team failed to sweep. Or even after they succeeded, come to think of it.