Three Met Comebacks Sting The Rays 8-7 In Ten Innings By Rich Coutinho/TheNYextra.com
It was a night at Citi that reminded us all of the type of games the Mets won a year ago. And it came over the team that has clearly been the best team in baseball this season.
The night began with Kodai Senga pitching his best game of the season allowing just 1 earned run while striking out a career high 12 batters. But he left the game trailing 1-0 as the Mets sputtering offense continued to derail for the first six innings. In the 7th frame, the Mets got some offense from a new source–Mark Vientos who was just brought up from AAA Syracuse on Wednesday crushed a 2 run homer to knot the score at 2. But the Met bullpen usually reliable this season, gave the Rays 3 runs in the following 2 innings putting the Mets 3 runs behind heading to their final at bat.
And on this night, another Met youngster–Francisco Alvarez tied the game with a 3-run homer becoming only the 4th Met in history to smack a three-run homer down 3 runs when the team was down to their last out and only the second player to do that in the last 8 years with Daniel Murphy the last Met to do that way back in 2015.
So the Rays and Mets headed to the 10th inning where the real theatrics would take center stage. The Rays scored 2 runs off David Robertson and with 2 on and 1 out Pete Alonso crushed a three-run homer to give the Mets a win. This gam reminded me so much of last year when the Mets made comebacks like this a common occurrence. It was clearly the most dramatic win of this season and when you think about it, a contest like this clearly illustrates that this team has plenty of young studs in the system which combined with a veteran roster can really light that fire that has been missing all year–Comeback Central.
This was the first walk-off win of the season for this team and the Mets are now an MLB best 12-2 in extra innings since the start of last year. But more important than all of that is that after a disappointing Justin Verlander start, they refused to quit the following night against a team that most think is the best in baseball. It was also a game the Mets picked each other up refusing to go quietly even being down by three runs in the final at-bat. And Pet Alonso regained his major league lead in homers with 15 home runs while he also paces the league with 36 RBI–more than any player in the senior circuit.
In my humble opinion, this is a game you might want to circle on the calendar as wins like this often begin a winning streak that changes a season. And I get the sense the Mets did just that on a May Night in Flushing, New York.