The Mets kept the good train rolling on Sunday afternoon, as they finished off the series sweep of the Miami Marlins by a score of 10-1. The Mets, now winners of four straight ball games, sit at 26-33, six games out of a Wild Card spot.
The Mets offense was the star of the show today, as they put ten runs on Miami, who had to pivot to a bullpen game due to expected starter Janson Junk’s surprise trip to the injured list this morning. They treated opener John King rudely, as Carson Benge greeted him
with his first career lead off home run. The offense did a great job of keeping up the pressure, as they scored runs in four different innings. Marcus Semien hit a two run home run, as part of a game that saw the veteran reach base four times, to make it 3-0 in the second. They added two more in the fourth, when Luis Torrens hit a clean little opposite field single with the bases loaded, making it 5-1 at the time.
The big inning for the Mets came in the sixth inning, when they faced off against right hander Josh White, who was making his Major League debut and was treated very rudely. White looked good through the first two batters, striking out A.J. Ewing and getting Brett Baty to fly out. It fell apart for White from there, as he walked Semien, hit Torrens with a pitch, and walked Benge to load the bases for Bo Bichette. Bichette also worked a walk, pushing the lead to 6-1, and getting Juan Soto to the dish. Soto, who is on another planet right now, hit his ninth home run over his last 15 games, taking a cement mixer slider 109 ft. to the bullpen. The grand slam is the first for the Mets this season, and gave the Mets a 10-1 lead.
Nolan McLean got the ball to start and had a very strange game. He only surrendered two hits and one run, but he walked five and only struck out two (and he hit a batter!). He only had two 1-2-3 innings, as one would imagine with the five walks and a hit batsman, but he was able to consistently wriggle out of jams of his own creation. He also got some pretty timely defensive plays that helped prevent bigger innings on top of that, namely from Brett Baty and A.J. Ewing.
After the grand slam, the game was all but over. The Mets got two on with two out singles by Semien and Torrens in the seventh but did not cash them in, and went quietly in the eighth against utility man Javier Sanoja. David Peterson, who was recently swapped with Sean Manaea as the bulk reliever out of the pen, got his first save of the season. The lefty was excellent over the final four innings, surrendering just a hit and a walk, striking out three. The Mets, who need to just stack wins and see what happens, will look to do so on the West Coast (again), as they fly to Seattle for a three-game series starting tomorrow night.
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Box scores
Win Probability Added
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Big Mets winner: Marcus Semien, +19% WPA
Big Mets loser: Honestly? Nobody. The lowest was -2% WPA for A.J. Ewing.
Mets pitchers: 17% WPA
Mets hitters: 33% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Marcus Semien’s two run home run in the second inning, +10.4% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Jakob Marsee’s walk in the fourth inning, -6.2% WPA
