The Mets rallied in the bottom of the 10th for a 4-3 walk-off win against the Yankees at Citi Field on Wednesday night.
The win gave the Mets a split of the two-game Subway Series, with two more games at Yankee Stadium in July. It was only their second win in their last 11 games.
Here are the takeaways...
1) With Eduardo Escobar as the free runner at second to start the bottom of the 10th, Mark Vientos struck out against right-handed reliever Albert Abreu for the first out. Yankee manager Aaron Boone then brought in lefty Nick Ramirez to face Brandon Nimmo, who doubled off the fence in right field to score the winning run.
For Nimmo it was a huge redemption after he made a mental blunder in the seventh inning to cut short the Mets’ game-tying rally, as he was picked off second rounding the base too far, not realizing that Vientos was being held at third on Starling Marte’s game-tying single to left.
2) The game nearly got away from the Mets in the seventh inning mostly because of a lack of awareness on defense.
The Yankees took a 2-1 lead on Jeff McNeil’s throwing error as he tried to turn an inning-ending double play, allowing Josh Donaldson to score as the throw sailed wide of first, off the glove of Vientos.
McNeil’s big mistake was making the throw at all. On a relatively slowly hit ball to short by Isiah Kiner-Falefa, McNeil had no shot at getting two and should have eaten the ball.
From there, Falefa went to third on a stolen base-and-throwing error by Francisco Alvarez, then stole home on Brooks Raley. IKF broke from third as Raley was winding up, and when the lefty realized the runner was going, he uncorked a wild pitch high over Alvarez’s head.
3) Buck Showalter had a crucial decision go his way in the sixth inning when he decided to leave Justin Verlander in the game to pitch to Giancarlo Stanton.
The Yankees had just tied the score 1-1 and Verlander, at that point over 100 pitches, looked like he was running on fumes. With a more dependable bullpen Showalter may have taken him out, but he preferred Verlander to reliever Jeff Brigham, who was warming up.
And after falling behind 3-0, Verlander threw a fastball and Stanton hit a 118.3 mph rocket, but it was on the ground right at Escobar, who turned it into an inning-ending 5-4-3 double play.
4) Tommy Pham has emerged as one of the Mets’ more dependable hitters lately, and that continued when he drove a two-out double to the fence in right-center in the fifth inning to put his team ahead 1-0. He also singled in the middle of the Mets’ game-tying rally in the seventh.
Pham came into the game hitting .342 with a 1.179 OPS in his last 11 games.
5) Verlander bounced back in a big way from his clunker against the Braves, allowing one run on three hits over six innings. In doing so he continued his success against the Yankees.
Over his last six regular-season starts against them, Verlander was 4-0 with a 1.96 ERA. For his career Verlander was 9-7 with a 3.34 ERA in 23 regular season starts against the Yankees.
He also has made nine career postseason starts against them and is 5-1 with a 2.62 ERA. That includes a complete game, 13-strikeout performance in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS.
Cole, on the other hand, had mostly struggled against the Mets during his career. In six previous starts he was 2-2 with a 6.75 ERA, though only one of those was as a Yankee, when he gave up four runs over 3.1 innings at Yankee Stadium in 2021.
In his only previous career start at Citi Field, Cole gave up seven earned runs in five innings.