Yanks erupt for 6 in 8th to take Round 1 of Subway Series

Yankees 8 Mets 2 (Yankee Stadium, The Bronx, NY)

Mets record: 29-18

Mets streak: Lost 1

WP - Devin Williams (2-2)

LP - Ryne Stanek (1-4)

Seat on the Korner:

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.

A lot of Yankee fans I know were down on Cody Bellinger two weeks ago, but he's been heating up lately and he burned the Mets big time in the Sunday night Subway Series battle at Yankee Stadium.

Bellinger, who is hitting .345 and slugging .621 over his last 15 games, was 3-for-3 with two walks and drove in six of the Yankees' eight runs to earn his sit-down with Ralph.

The Yankees cleanup hitter doubled in the first two runs of the game, yanking a David Peterson serve past a diving Pete Alonso and down the right-field line for a double, chasing home Paul Goldschmidt and Aaron Judge. It extended Bellinger's hitting streak to 13 games.

Bellinger had an infield hit in the seventh and then didn't waste the chance to blow open the game when he faced Génesis Cabrera with the bases loaded and two out in the eighth inning. The Yankees had broken a 2-2 tie and just taken a two-run lead when Bellinger stepped to the plate. He jumped on the first pitch and lofted it to right field, with the ball evading Juan Soto's leap and landing in the first row of the short porch for a grand slam. Yes, it was a Yankee Stadium homer, and would have been out in only three other big-league parks.

Still, Bellinger is tied for the major league lead for grand slams since 2017 with nine.

Need to Know

• New Giants quarterback Russell Wilson, a lifelong Yankee fan who grew up rooting for Derek Jeter, was at the game.

• Juan Soto had agreed to wear a microphone for an in-game interview but changed his mind about an hour before the game. Brandon Nimmo agreed to be mic'd up in Soto's place.

• Soto was set up to silence the Yankee Stadium boo birds when he came up in the fifth inning with the Mets down a run and Jeff McNeil — who walked, was sacrificed to second and went to third on Lindor's ground out — on third. With the count 2-2, Max Fried uncorked a wild pitch allowing McNeil to score, but Fried then struck out Soto to the delight of the Yankee faithful.

  
  

• Four Yankees pitchers walked three and struck out 11 and while yielding three hits. The Mets' four pitchers walked eight.

• The Mets move on to Fenway Park for a three-game series against the Red Sox starting Monday night. The Mets are expected to pitch Kodai Senga (4-2), Clay Holmes (5-2) and Tylor Megill (3-4). Boston will counter with Hunter Dobbins (2-1) in Game 1 and Garrett Crochet (4-3) in Game 3, with no starter named yet for the middle game.

Turning Point

The score was knotted at 2 and there was one out with runners on second and third in the last of the eighth inning when the Yankees' Jorbit Vivas — hitting .172 at the time — took on Mets reliever Ryne Stanek. With Stanek pouring in 100-mph fastball after 100-mph fastball, Vivas kept fouling them off and ran the count to 3-and-2. On the 11th pitch of the at-bat, Vivas hit a ground ball to Pete Alonso that the Mets first baseman threw home wildly to break the tie. It should have been an out. Still, Vivas' ability to put the ball in play after an epic at-bat very well might have been the key to the Yankees' winning rally. Yankees manager Aaron Boone was impressed.

Three Keys

Pete deja-blew it

In Saturday's win over the Yankees, Mets first baseman Pete Alonso came in on a grounder with Jasson Dominguez at third and fired a strike to the plate to nail Dominguez and keep the score tied at 2-2.

On Sunday night, the exact same thing happened: With Dominguez again at third and one out, Alonso was given virtually the same opportunity to make the play he made the day before. Jorbit Vivas smacked a grounder to Alonso and he fired to the plate — but this time the throw sailed way over the head of Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez, allowing the go-ahead run to score.

It was reminiscent of Lucas Dudas' throw home in the ninth inning of Game 5 in the 2015 World Series — or maybe even 50 Cent's memorable first pitch.

"I messed it up," Alonso said afterward. "I had the identical play yesterday, hit straight to me and had a tag play at home, and I just made an awful throw. It's on me.

"After that," Alonso said, "the momentum got out of hand. I had my feet set, but didn't have my fingers on top of the baseball and it sailed."

What happened to the bats?

The Mets hitters, who were cold coming into the series, were quiet all weekend. They scored just seven runs in the three games, and Sunday night the top three hitters in the lineup — Francisco Lindor, Juan Soto and Pete Alonso — went a combined 0-for-12 with four strikeouts. Of course Yankees starter Max Fried had a lot to do with the Mets' offensive anemia in the finale, going six strong innings while giving up two runs on three hits and striking out eight — including Soto and Alonso twice each. Although both runs off Fried were earned, the second came when Jeff McNeil raced home on a wild pitch in the fifth, an inning during which the Mets failed to get a hit.

Peterson deserved better

David Peterson had another strong start over six innings. Peterson gave up just one earned run, three hits and struck out four, and the argument could be made that he shouldn't have allowed a run when the Yankees struck twice in the first inning.

Paul Goldschmidt led off the Yankee first inning with a routine grounder to third that Mark Vientos booted. One fly-out later, it should have been none on and two out. Instead, Aaron Judge's ground-rule double into the right-field corner put runners on second and third with one out. If Judge's double comes with no one on, Alonso would be playing back with two outs and Cody Bellinger at the plate. But with second and third and one out, Alonso was playing up, allowing Bellinger's hard shot along the first-base line to evade the Mets first baseman for a two-run double.

After giving up an infield hit to D.J. LeMahieu leading off the Yankees second inning, Peterson didn't give up a hit the rest of the way.

Mets manager Carlos Mendoza admitted after the game that the team's defense has been disappointing at times this season.