Neil Miller/TheNYExtra.com
Offense keeps red hot with 10 2-out hits
Just over a week ago, the Mets were 0-5 to start the season and gloom and doom was the prevailing notion in Mets Nation. But since that moment, the Mets have gone 6-2 and done it with a combination of great pitching and timely hitting. Both those trends continued tonight at Citi as Luis Severino gave the team 5 innings of one run ball followed by a Met bullpen that tossed 4 scoreless innings. After the game Met manager Carlos Mendoza praised his pen saying, “We have a ton of guys down there all of whom work so hard at throwing strikes and challenging hitters.”
And for the second straight day, the Met pen finished the game giving Met closer Edwin Diaz a night of rest meaning that he could go the next 2 days if the Mets need a game saved in the final frame. On this night it was Jake Diekman, Reid Garrett, Adam Ottavino and Jorge Lopez that came out of the bullpen to shut the door.
But if the truth be told, the offense was once again the story as this team continues to get 2 out hits. They managed 10 hits of that variety and more importantly, Jeff McNeil’s bat continues to be red hot as he mashed 3 hits on the night. The offensive night got a huge exclamation point with a Pete Alonso solo homer, his third of the year leading off the 8th inning.
Hitting is sometimes a hard thing to explain in this sport but Jeff McNeil explained it best when he said, “Right now we are all going to the plate with a plan in mind and that could mean take some pitches to get a look or go up there mashing that first pitch. Being able to do both of those things makes us a lineup that could be hard to face.” Makes perfect sense to me but I also think 2 out hitting with runners in scoring position is likely the toughest hitting situation in the sport and in the last week, this team has done it better than they have done it in a long time. I think you would have to go back to the 2022 season to see it done that way. And this is with DH JD Martinez yet to have his first at-bat as a Met.
When a team starts a season at 0-5 it can be very debilitating but I learned a bunch about this team on how they responded to that. They did not panic and merely trusted the process. They knew the bats would wake up and honestly even during that losing streak the pitching was solid despite missing the ace of the staff—Kodai Senga.
When teams go through that, many times it takes months to even get back to 500 but guess what–with a win Saturday afternoon this Met team can get back to the .500 just 9 days after being 0-5. You do that by not pushing that panic button and credit manager Carlos Mendoza who instills that in his players.
On this night, there was also another side note–the crowd gave an ovation to Francisco Lindor every time he stepped to the plate. He went 1 for 3 on this night and that ovation came as a by-product of a social media message the Met owner asked the fans to do. Remember last year in Philly, the fans there did the same for shortstop Trea Turner and that turned his season around from that moment forward.
As it stands now, the mood in the Met clubhouse is different than 9 days ago and that is a great life lesson for young players like Francisco Alvarez and Brett Baty who can see a baseball season can turn in an instant. Of course, this is still a small sample size but one thing I have learned in the first few weeks of the season is quit is not in this team’s vocabulary. And that will help them in the journey of a long baseball season where both peaks and valleys appear instantly before our eyes.
