Don’t look now, but the Mets might be on another run.
Sunday and Tuesday, the Mets finally played sound baseball and cruised to a 5-1 win over the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday night at Citi Field. It extended their winning streak to three games and it’s their ninth in their last 13 tries. The Mets took the series to win their third one of the month.
hit his second home run in as many nights and Justin Verlander one-hit Chicago (40-57) through six innings before surrendering one run in the seventh. The Mets (45-50) put up four runs to add to Baty’s homer in the fourth to go up 5-0.
and the Mets entering the day eight games back from the last NL Wild Card spot, Buck Showalter’s club needed a game like this one and a performance like the one they got from Verlander.
Finally, he was able to work off of his slider.
“I’ve been kind of working hard all year to try to find a little bit more deceptiveness and I saw some great results,” Verlander said. “Building on the last start, the swings I was seeing weren’t great swings. A lot of hard-hit balls. Take away the walks and try to stay positive and build on that. Going in today, I was able to do that.”
The right-hander was extremely efficient, needing only 59 pitches to get through the first six innings. With one out in the seventh, Luis Robert Jr. got a slider on the outside corner and took it over the left-center fence. Verlander then walked Jake Burger and with two outs, Gavin Sheets legged out an infield single to put two on with two out.
Verlander (4-5) then struck out catcher Carlos Perez on four pitches to end the inning. It was the only snag he hit throughout the outing. He allowed only one earned run — Robert’s homer — on three hits, walked one and struck out seven over eight innings, matching a season-high mark for innings pitched.
He was also the recipient of some stellar defense behind him.
“Tommy [Pham] made a couple nice plays early on and Brett had the backhanded throw,” Verlander said. “All of those add up. When things aren’t going your way and another ball finds a hole and it just kind of squeaks through, you’re like, ‘Oh no, there it is again.’ And you’ve got to go to work and try not to give up runs. So it’s nice when those guys make plays like that.”
This came after a few rough days for Baty. After some defensive miscues earlier in the week, the rookie third baseman made a fantastic backhanded stop to get an out in the third, caught a tough popup in foul territory in in the eighth and then gloved a line drive to help Verlander get through the eighth unscathed.
“There are going to be games like that for everybody throughout the course of the season,” Baty said. “We play a really long season. I’ll say it again, I’m going to be the same guy every single day. No matter if I go 0-for-4 with four strikeouts and make three errors in the field, I’m going to come in the next day and I’m going to work my ass off and I’m going to try to be the best player I can be out there.”
The Mets scored all five runs off right-hander Touki Toussaint. Baty led off the second with his seventh home run of the season to put the Mets on the board.
“Looks like Brett might be trending back the other way a little bit,” said Showalter.
Toussaint’s command wavered in the fourth and the Mets took advantage, putting two on with none out. The red-hot Francisco Alvarez drove in his 40th run of the season with an RBI single. Runners were moved over on sacrifices and Brandon Nimmo delivered the big one with a two-out RBI double to put the Mets up 5-0.
Toussaint (0-3) lasted six innings. Right-hander Jesse Scholtens pitched two scoreless frames but it didn’t matter. The damage was done.
Adam Ottavino made the lead stand up with a scoreless ninth inning. There would be no bullpen implosion this time.
“Coming in and being able to pitch that inning without having to get somebody else up was big for us tonight,” Showalter said. “That kept us on our feet to support [Jose Quintana’s] first outing tomorrow.”
The Mets have shown that they’re capable of winning this month. Now they need to show that they’re capable of maintaining this winning play in order to stave off a fire sale.
“We’ve been fighting and clawing and doing everything we can,” Verlander said. “We see the leaderboard and we know where we’re at and we need to go on a run. Hopefully, this is the beginning of something special.”
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