Mets vs. Pirates Recap: Mets take lead, hold lead to take game and series

Matt Harvey looked solid if unspectacular Sunday night, and the Mets scored in four straight innings from the fourth to the seventh in beating the Pirates 7-2 in Pittsburgh Sunday night.

Harvey had only one 1-2-3 inning—in the first—but mostly looked solid in pitching at least six innings for the first time since April 21 against Washington, when he went seven. Harvey allowed six hits, walking two and striking out four. He surrendered his lone run on a Gregory Polanco home run leading off the bottom of the second.

That 1-0 Pirate lead held until the top of the fourth, when the Mets’ offense took over. With two outs, Asdrubal Cabrera launched a clutch two-run double off the left-center field wall, scoring two.

The Mets broke it open in the fifth with a rally that started with a one-out single up the middle by Harvey. Curtis Granderson (3-for-5 on the night) followed with a double. Jose Reyes singled to score Harvey, followed by a Jay Bruce double scoring Granderson and Reyes that extended the lead to 5-1.

The Mets added a run in the sixth on a Granderson RBI single and another in the seventh on a laser of a home run from Lucas Duda that left his bat at approximately 116.3 miles per hour.

From there, the Mets’ bullpen managed to keep the game from getting anything more than tangentially interesting. Paul Sewald fired two effective innings, though he did surrender an RBI double to David Freese in the eighth. A five-run lead might not have seemed perfectly comfortable when Neil Ramirez came in to start the ninth, but he worked around two walks to throw a scoreless ninth and close out the game.

The win allowed the Mets to take two out of three games in the series, picking up an earlier season thread of winning a series while recording their one loss in a memorable, painfully dramatic fashion—a thread unfortunately interrupted by a six-game losing streak and a series defeat at home to the then-worst team in baseball. The Mets will look to try to continue to win with more consistency as they start a seven-game homestand Monday afternoon against the Milwaukee Brewers.

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Win Probability Added

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What’s WPA?

Big winners: Asdrubal Cabrera, +22.6% WPA, Jay Bruce, +15.7% WPA, Matt Harvey, +14.1% WPA
Big losers: Lucas Duda, -7.7% WPA, Juan Lagares, -6.2% WPA
The aw3s0mest play: Asdrubal Cabrera’s two-run double in the fourth inning, +23.3%
The sux0rest play: Gregory Polanco’s solo home run in the second inning, -11.2%
Total pitcher WPA: 16.0% WPA+
Total batter WPA: 34.0% WPA+
GWRBI!: Jose Reyes