It wasn’t pretty, but the Mets found a way to defeat the Phillies 5-4 one day after one of their most humiliating losses of the season. However, they did lose both Brandon Nimmo and J.D. Davis to injury over the course of the game, but the injuries seem minor and hopefully they will both return to action soon.
Before exiting early, Nimmo led off the game with a strikeout against Zack Wheeler. The Mets scored four runs before Wheeler would recorded another out. Francisco Lindor reached after getting hit by a pitch, and Jeff McNeil followed with a walk. Then the offense went to work. Pete Alonso and Michael Conforto hit back-to-back doubles, and J.D. Davis added an RBI single to give the Mets an early 4-0 lead. They could have added on after Dom Smith singled, but James McCann hit into a double play to allow Wheeler to escape the inning without further damage.
Taijuan Walker was the beneficiary of the four-run lead, but unfortunately he gave back half of the runs in the second inning. He had excellent defense behind him in his last start, but his defense failed him a bit in this one. The first run came home on a groundout by Andrew Knapp after a single and a double to lead off the inning. Dominic Smith fielded the double by Nick Maton and threw to third instead of second, which allowed Maton to get to second base. Zack Wheeler then singled with two outs to bring home the second run which would not have happened if Maton was still on first.
That made it only made it 4-2 at the time, but in the sixth, Walker gave up a two-run home run to Alec Bohm to tie the game. It was a tad unfortunate that happened because Walker had been pitching a solid ballgame. He ended up pitching six innings and gave up four runs and struck out four. He continues to look like a solid back-end of the rotation arm but probably shouldn’t be pushed to go three times through the batting order.
In relief of Walker, the bullpen was again spectacular, even when things got wacky in the seventh. Aaron Loup was the first man out of the pen and looked like he struck out Andrew McCutchen to the point where McCutchen started walking to the dugout. The umpire did not ring him up, and the at-bat ended up in a walk. So now with McCutchen on base, Matt Joyce hit a ground ball into the shifted infield. Francisco Lindor attempted to tag McCutchen, missed, and threw the ball to first where Joyce was called safe. The umpires got together, changed their minds, and called McCutchen out for leaving the basepath—despite the fact he never deviated from his path. Then the Mets challenged the call at first, which got overturned. So the umpires got three calls wrong in the inning, but no harm, no foul as far as the Mets were concerned.
After scoring four runs in the first inning and losing two of their best offensive players, the offense again stagnated. That all changed when the Phillies turned to Hector Neris in the ninth inning. Conforto jumped on his 0-1 pitch and deposited it into the right field stands. It has taken awhile for the right fielder to get going, but it looks like he is finally coming out of his funk, which would be huge for this team.
Another huge win for the team is how elite Edwin Díaz has looked in the closer’s role. He easily dispatched the Phillies in the bottom of the inning to nail down the victory.
Sure the Mets had to sweat this one a bit after jumping out to a sizable lead, but this team needs to figure out how to win ballgames when hit with adversity and they managed to do that.
Oh, and Trevor May got the win. May day, indeed.
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Box scores
Win Probability Added
Big Mets winner: Michael Conforto, +39.4% WPA
Big Mets loser: Taijuan Walker, -14.7% WPA
Mets pitchers: 23.6% WPA
Mets hitters: 26.4% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Michael Conforto home run in ninth
Teh sux0rest play: Alec Bohm home run in sixth