The Mets opened the game with four straight extra-base hits for the first time in franchise history and never looked back in a 9-1 shellacking of the Rockies on Thursday afternoon in Colorado.
With the win, New York (61-54) took over second place in the division and the third NL wild card spot after Atlanta dropped its fifth straight game. Colorado fell to 42-74 on the season after dropping two of three in the series.
Here are the takeaways…
- Francisco Lindor started the afternoon with his 28th double on the year, lining a 1-2 offering from Rockies starter left-hander Austin Gomber into the gap in left-center. Jose Iglesias, batting second with Brandon Nimmo getting the day off, took an 0-2 pitch to nearly the exact same spot for an RBI double.
J.D. Martinez hit one off the end of the bat but still managed to get it to the warning track in the left-field corner for an RBI double. The double streak came to an end when Pete Alonso launched a 471-foot two-run bomb to center (111.6 mph off the bat).
After a pair of hard-hit outs, Jeff McNeil yanked an 0-2 double into the corner in right but he was stranded there. Overall, seven of the eight balls the Mets put in play in the first were hit harder than 90 mph, and the four runs scored in the opening frame dwarfed the one first-inning run the club managed in the first 19 games since the All-Star break.
- Alonso launched his second dinger of the day to start the third, driving a fastball down in the zone 454 feet (110.6 mph) deep to left. He became the eighth player to hit two homers of 450 feet or more in the same game in the Statcast era (since 2015). It was slugger's 21st multi-homer game, one behind Darryl Strawberry for the most in club history.
- Mark Vientos, after two deep flyouts his first time up, clobbered a two-run homer in the fifth (425 feet, 103.5 mph) on a changeup down in the zone off reliever Peter Lambert to put the Mets up 7-0.
- Pitching with an instant four-run lead, David Peterson looked to pound the zone early and pitched around a one-out hit for a 16-pitch first with a pair of strikeouts.
The lefty pitched around one walk each in the second and third – he's averaged 4.1 walks per nine innings in each of the last three seasons – but got through nine outs on a comfortable 50 pitches (30 strikes). Pitching in his hometown for the first time in his career, he gave up some deep flyouts aided by the thin air but kept Colorado off the board.
Peterson ran into trouble in the fifth when a pair of one-out singles put runners on the corners and a four-pitch walk loaded the bases. Brenton Doyle drilled a 2-2 offering deep into the right-center gap, but Tyrone Taylor tracked it down and it was just a 400-foot sac fly. (A homer in 25 of 30 ballparks including Citi Field.) The lefty fell behind Kris Bryant 3-1, after getting squeezed by the home plate umpire, but he got the former MVP swinging to end the threat.
That ended Peterson’s afternoon, his final line: 5.0 innings, four hits, one run, three walks and five strikeouts on 88 pitches (51 strikes).
- Adam Ottavino delivered a scoreless sixth getting around a hit and walk with a strikeout. Ryne Stanek needed 10 pitches for a 1-2-3 seventh with two strikeouts, getting four whiffs on six swings. Danny Young started the eighth by hitting the first two batters, but thanks to a 5-4-3 twin killing escaped without any damage. He stayed on for a scoreless ninth with a pair of strikeouts and a pair of singles.
- In the eighth, Harrison Bader got plunked in the back on a 95 mph fastball before Taylor lined a double the other way to put two on for Lindor who yanked a full-count RBI single. Iglesias added a sac fly for his second RBI of the day.
- In the oddities department, Lindor lined one sharply (106.7 mph) in the third that nicked Rockies pitcher Lambert and was caught in the air by shortstop Ezequiel Tovar who doubled off Taylor at first. It was the rare 1-6-3 double play on a ball that never touched the ground.
Lambert stayed in the game, but after a four-pitch walk started the seventh, the trainer came out to look at his non-throwing left hand and he exited the game.