Giants go deep six times as Mets are deep sixed in Flushing

Giants 9 Mets 5 (Citi Field, Flushing, NY)

Mets record: 64-78

Mets streak: Lost 1

WP - Anthony Molina (3-0)

LP - Zac Thornton (3-5)

Seat on the Korner: Christian Koss and Rafael Devers

We select a Star of the Game and virtually invite him to take his Seat on the Korner — just as Ralph Kiner did on WOR-TV Channel 9 during the early days of the New York Mets.

Continuing the tradition of Rheingold Beer sponsoring Kiner’s Korner, this season every seat is proudly presented by The Main Event Restaurant & Sports Bar.

With locations in Plainview and Farmingdale, The Main Event features 80+ HD TVs, fresh daily seafood, and Black Angus certified steaks—so you never have to choose between great food and the big game.

Devers and Koss were on two different trajectories coming into this game. Koss came in as a .203 hitter with one home run on the season. Devers meanwhile came into this game with 24 HR's, 55 RBI and a .999 OPS in his previous 72 games, raising his average from .230 to .256 on the season. Today's their roads ran parallel. Both tagged Zac Thornton with two homers and three RBI each in the first five innings of the game as the Giants went deep six times to sink the Mets' modest two game winning streak.

Need to Know

• Zac Thornton finished with 82 pitches in five innings, giving up six runs on seven hits and a walk while striking out six. This is the first time in Thornton's career that he had given up more than four earned runs in a game.

• Thornton became the first Mets pitcher to give up two HR's to the nine hitter since Ron Darling gave up two homers to Derek Lilliquist in 1990.

• A.J. Ewing's two run home run off Anthony Molina in the second inning was his first homer since July 8th against Kansas City.

• Osleivis Basabe's two run homer off Jefry Yan made it 8-3 in the 8th and was his first homer of the season off a lefty.

• Grant McCray's homer off Justin Hagenman was the Giants' 6th of the day. Hagenman's appearance after starting on Wednesday after Robert Stock's relief appearance on Friday could be the strongest signal yet that a Jonah Tong callup is inevitable.

• The six homers given up by Met pitching is the most they've given up all season.

• Brett Baty drove in three of the five runs with a bases loaded walk in the 7th and a two run double with two outs in the 9th.

Turning Point

Ewing's homer gave the Mets a 2-1 lead. But the Giants came back in the third inning with a Christian Koss' first homer of the game to give the Giants the lead for good.

No way anyone on earth should hit that pitch in that location out of the ballpark ... and certainly not a .203 hitter. But Koss did it, and it turned the game on its ear.

Three Keys (Plus One)

Lollipop, Lollipop, Oh Lolli-lolli-lolli

Thornton's stuff and location was a little off. It was no more apparent than on Koss' second home run of the game which came on what was called a sweeper, but acted more like a meatball:

Way too much middle of the plate that entire inning. Shay Whitcomb hit a hard liner to Juan Soto for the first out in that 5th inning. That was middle/middle. The Jonah Cox single which followed the Koss homer and preceded Devers' second homer was down the middle. The Bryce Eldridge double that followed Devers' second homer was a flat sweeper that was close to the middle of the plate. For pitchers like Thornton, who don't throw as hard as Randy Johnson, location needs to be on point or they're cooked. Thornton was buttered up and lightly toasted today.

When the Strike Zone is as Big as Corona

To be fair, throwing baseballs to Rafael Devers right now is a chore.

Look where Thornton put this pitch for Devers' second dinger of the game:

Belt high, to be sure. but outer edge. Devers is hitting all of them right now. Anything success that the Giants are having (which isn't much right now), are mostly formed at the hands of Devers.

Darin Ruf's Revenge

The Mets put together a rally in the 7th inning down 6-2. With one out, Jared Young and Marcus Semien singled, and that was followed by a walk to A.J. Ewing. After Joel Kuhnel struck out Francisco Alvarez on a sinker, the Giants brought in another righty to replace Kuhnel.

You may not remember Carson Seymour, but I'll never forget him. He was one of the four players that the Mets traded for Darin Ruf. Ruf worked out much better as a reliever for the Mets than a hitter, which wasn't a good thing since Ruf was a first baseman. But to hear people talk about it, the Mets traded four future Hall of Famers for him. That was hardly the case, but Seymour did get a very small bit of revenge against his old organization. After walking Brett Baty to bring home a run, he faced Francisco Lindor in an extremely high-pressure situation.

The Giants would score a couple of more runs to rub salt in the wound, and they would run away with it from there. Ruf's scoreless relief appearances from 2022 will just have to keep us warm tonight.

Bonus Key: It's Probably Me

Just as an excuse to show you Basabe's home run, I wanted to let you know that this season might be on me:

The Mets are 14 games under .500 on the season. The Mets record when I blog these games here on the Korner? 14-28. That's a 1993 Mets pace. My bWAR (blog WAR) is like -3.5 or something. A replacement level blogger would have this team in the thick of the wild card race.

Clearly, it's all my fault.