Mets 8 Marlins 3 (LoanDepot Park, Miami FL)
Mets record: 71-81
Mets streak: Won 1
WP- Kodai Senga (12-7)
LP - Eury Perez (5-6)
Seat on the Korner: Mark Vientos
We select the star of the game and virtually invite him to a Seat on the Korner, just as Ralph Kiner used to do for his studio postgame show on WOR-channel 9 broadcasts in the early decades of the Mets.
Tonight's Seat on the Korner belongs to Mark Vientos for his first two-home-run game. Vientos put the Mets on the board in the second and absolutely crushed one in the sixth. Vientos' hitting has come around since coming back from the IL: going into tonight's game, he was hitting .293/.339/.483 over his previous 16 games, including his first three-hit game Sept. 17. Take a seat, Mark, and tell us how you seem to have finally figured out major league pitching.
Need to Know
Brandon Nimmo had his second consecutive three-hit game, continuing his hot hitting on the road. Nimmo's road slash line is .289/.368/.438 as compared to .247/.346/.452 at Citi Field. Nimmo has hit safely in 19 of his last 21 games
DJ Stewart was a late scratch, for reasons not disclosed.
Jeff McNeil extended his consecutive games on base string to 13.
Was Pete Alonso going on a hit-and-run, or running on his own in the top of the seventh? Either way, his jump kept the Mets out of a double play when Francisco Lindor hit a ground ball, allowing Ronny Mauricio to score.
Marlins starter Eury Perez lasted only three innings, It was his shortest start of the season.
David Peterson takes the bump for th Mets in Philadelphia Thursday, followed by Tylor Megill, Jose Quintana and Jose Butto.
Turning Point
Tonight's turning point of the game came in the bottom of the fifth and involved two key plays by Jeff McNeil in right field. With the Mets leading, 3-1, Jorge Soler singled to lead off the inning. Jazz Chisholm hit a hard drive toward the right field corner and the ball appeared destined to bounce off the wall. McNeil cut off the high bounce and wheeled to throw to cutoff man Ronny Mauricio, whose relay nailed Chisolm as he tried to turn his single into a double, with Soler moving to third. Xavier Edwards, who came into the game when Jake Burger left with a quad injury (more about that below), hit a fly ball to McNeil, who threw a strike to nail Soler trying to score. Had it not been for those two plays -- only the third time in Mets history that an outfielder recorded two assists in the same inning (Bernard Gilkey and Gus Bell are the others) -- the Marlins might have jumped on a somewhat shaky Kodai Senga and taken charge of the game. After McNeil's two deflating (for the Marlins) plays, they were essentially done.
Three Keys
On a night when he didn't have his best stuff -- in particular, his ghost fork seemed to have disapoeared -- Kodai Senga gritted his way through six innings and got the outs when he needed them (helped, of course, by Jeff McNeil's fielding heroics in the bottom of the fifth). Senga only struck out three, walked two and gave up seven hits in his 28th start of the season, the most by a Mets pitcher in many years.
Fielding can win games, and the lack of it can lose games. Exhibit A: the Marlins' misadventures in the top of the third. With Brandon Nimmo on first after a walk, Ronny Mauricio hit a screaming single to right. Right fielder Jesus Sanchez missed the cutoff man on his throw to get Nimmo advancing to third. The ball got away from defensively-challenged third baseman Jake Burger, who threw wildly to home in an unsuccessful effort to get Nimmo at the plate (pulling a quad muscle in the process). Nimmo scored; Mauricio ended up on third and scored on a Pete Alonso sacrifice fly. Two Marlins errors resulted in two Mets runs.
Home runs helped get the Mets off to good start and break the game open. In addition to Mark Vientos' two (in the second and the sixth), Brett Baty hit one in the eighth and Brandon Nimmo in the ninth. Both came off of Johnny Cueto, who seems to have put on more than a few pounds since his heyday with the Reds.