Met-lagged: Red Sox fly high while Mets stuck in airplane mode

Red Sox 6 Mets 2 (Citi Field, Flushing, NY)

Mets record: 40-55

Mets streak: Lost 1

WP - Sonny Gray (11-1)

LP - Nolan McLean (6-6)

Seat on the Korner: Sonny Gray

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.

The pitching matchup on Friday turned out to be elite. Statistically, you could argue that Nolan McLean had the better night. But to the best of my knowledge, Nolan McLean didn't spend the better part of two days on a tarmac in Chicago waiting out two different mechanical problems on the same plane. But Sonny Gray did. And Sonny Gray gave up one run on five hits and a walk while being jet-lagged to lead the team to a 4-1 victory, their 7th straight win. It would have been even more impressive if he wasn't facing the Mets, but it's fairly impressive, nonetheless.

Need to Know

• The game started at 7:51 ET after the Red Sox had travel issues coming from Chicago. They didn't arrive at Citi Field until 5:05 ET.

• Bo Bichette started the game on the bench for the first time this season.

• Anthony Seigler went 2-for-5 including a home run in the 7th inning off A.J. Minter.

• Brett Baty extended his hitting streak to ten games with a single in the third inning. He would go 3-for-5 with his 4th home run of the year in the 9th. It was hsi first homer since May 18th. It was also his first three hit game of the season.

• Nolan McLean pitched six innings for his 5th straight start. McLean gave up five hits and two walks in his six innings, while giving up no earned runs and striking out seven.

• Kodai Senga pitched a 1-2-3 8th inning for the Mets.

• Wilyer Abreu put the icing on the cake for the Red Sox with a two run homer off Cionel Perez in the 9th to put it away.

• The Red Sox are now 43-1 when they take a lead into the 9th inning.

• This is the Red Sox first 7-game road winning streak since 2016.

Turning Point

You don't expect to have a baseball game turn on the third pitch of the game. But when it happened, I knew immediately that this could be it. Juan Soto, who was also not on a tarmac in Chicago earlier in the day, dropped a fly ball hit by Anthony Seigler for a two base error. Try as McLean might to get Soto off the hook, he gave up a two run double off the tarp to Masataka Yoshida to ensure that the Soto mistake would hang over the team like a dark cloud.

Three Keys

We're All Counting on You

It's too bad that tonight, of all nights, McLean had to get deGrommed by a lineup that was facing a jet-lagged pitcher. He was alternating seamlessly between being a pitcher that relied on his stuff and a pitcher who was relying on his guile to escape bad situations. It was just unfortunate that he couldn't escape the one bad situation that wasn't of his doing.

Reduced to a Quivering Wasted Piece of Jelly

Juan Soto, who was 6-for-13 against Sonny Gray coming into this game, was 0-for-2 with a sac fly RBI (the only run of the game for the Mets) against him tonight. (Soto did have himself a hard single in the 8th.) It was certainly not the best night for Soto. But to be fair, Sonny was taking care of the rest of the lineup with relative ease.

Side note: On that Soto strikeout, interesting that he didn't challenge. Soto knows the strike zone as well as anyone, so it tells me that the team as a whole was probably told to ease up on the challenges early in the game and save them for later.

Other side note: How the hell did Gray not make the All-Star team, but Michael Wacha (5-7, 3.77) did? And why are we still taking the All-Star Game at all seriously because of incomprehensible decisions like that?

And That, as Much as Anything Else, Led to My Drinking Problem

Speaking of tough nights, Francisco Lindor entered the game with a .185 batting average with runners in scoring position. He had two chances tonight and did not fare well. The first chance was in the third inning after Soto's sac fly and a throwing error put the tying run on third, and Lindor flew out to left.

The second chance happened in the 8th with the Sox up 4-1 and the tying runs on base with nobody out. Lindor was up first, and flied out to left-center. Carson Benge then flew out to right field for the second out, setting up Jorge Polanco as the final shot to do some damage in the 8th ...

Friendly reminder: The Mets were not on an airplane today.