The Mets (71-81) got to play spoiler in the Marlins (79-74) with a four-homer day to take the rubber game of the series Wednesday night, 8-3, in Miami.
Here are some takeaways...
- Kodai Senga got the start looking to solidify his NL Cy Young resume but appeared not to have the same control that saw him pitch his way into the conversation. The righty worked around a leadoff walk in the first, two baserunners on a walk and infield single in the second and a leadoff single in the third inning without any damage.
Senga’s luck ran out in the fourth inning, when a leadoff single by Bryan De La Cruz, a wild pitch, fielder's choice and sac fly made it a 3-1 game. The wild pitch was his 14th, the most in the majors. Josh Bell took Senga deep 417 feet to left center to start the home half of the sixth inning. The homer marked the fifth time the righty failed to retire the leadoff batter on the night.
Despite not getting much action on his breaking pitches (drew no swings and had just two called strikes on 11 pitches) or the “ghost fork” (three called strikes and two whiffs on 18 pitches), he earned his eighth-straight quality start. Overall, the 30-year-old had just six whiffs and 15 called strikes on 100 pitches (57 strikes).
His final line: six innings, seven hits, two runs, two walks, three strikeouts. Senga threw a first-pitch strike to just nine of the 25 batters he faced.
- The Mets’ defense picked up Senga in the fifth inning which started with Jorge Soler smacking his second hard-hit single of the night. Jazz Chisholm Jr. then scorched one toward the corner in right and was thinking double, but Jeff McNeil leaped to cut the ball off and hit the cutoff man Ronny Mauricio, who nailed Chisholm at second base by 10 feet. McNeil would come up aces once again when Soler challenged his arm on Xavier Edwards’ fly out, but the perfect one-hop throw home ended the inning.
McNeil was only in right field on Wednesday night because DJ Stewart was scratched from the lineup just moments before first pitch. That moved McNeil from left to right and put Rafael Ortega in left.
- Mark Vientos put the Mets ahead with one out in the second, lining a solo shot on an 0-2 slider from Miami’s six-foot-eight starter Eury Perez 367 feet (100.7 mph) that just snuck over the wall in left field for his sixth homer of the year.
And he wasn’t done there, as Vientos smacked a towering 417-foot (109.2 mph) solo dinger to right field in the sixth to make it 4-1. For the second time, the DH got an 0-2 hanging slider, this time from reliever George Soriano.
Vientos extended his hit streak to five games and is now 8-for-20 with four RBI in that span.
- New York would score two in the third inning thanks to a pair of errant throws, the first led to Marlins third baseman Jake Burger exiting with an injury. With Brandon Nimmo on first after a walk, Mauricio lined a base hit to right field and an errant throw to third got past Burger allowing Nimmo to score before the third baseman’s errant throw of his own allowed Mauricio to get to third. Pete Alonso tallied his 113th RBI of the year with a sac fly.
Alonso got his second RBI of the night with a one-out single in the seventh scoring Nimmo and sending Mauricio to third, who scored on a Francisco Lindor groundout and made it 6-2.
Brett Baty was scuffling, going hitless with a pair of strikeouts in his first three at-bats, but all that got whipped away in the eighth when he wallowed a 440-foot bomb to the second deck in right (113.1 mph) off Johnny Cueto for his first big league dinger in 92 at-bats. Nimmo would smack his 24th homer of the season in the ninth off Cueto.
The one-two spot in the lineup saw Nimmo go 3-for-4 with a walk, a double, a home run and three runs scored and Mauricio go 1-for-3 with two walks and two runs scored. Both pushed their hitting streaks to five games.
- After Drew Smith pitched a scoreless seventh, Brooks Raley was heading that way in the eighth but allowed a pair of two-out hits and was replaced by Phil Bickford with runners on the corners who allowed an RBI single to Yuli Gurriel. Trevor Gott pitched a 1-2-3 ninth inning to seal it.
- Mauricio, who impressed with his defense at third base in the opening two games of the series, was at second base Wednesday and made a fine play in the bottom of the first snagging a scorching grounder (101 mph off Chisholm Jr.'s bat) to get an out. And he wasn’t done, ranging to his right to spear a sharp liner up the middle to strand two runners in the eighth.