Mets Scores & Recaps

Escobar, Marte, and Carrasco lead the Mets over Texas

Eduardo Escobar homered for the third straight game, Starling Marte homered for the second straight game, and great pitching led the Mets to another series victory.

By David Capobianco@theitaliandave Jul 3, 2022, 5:29pm EDT

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Coming off a frustrating loss on Saturday and a rough week against the Astros, the Mets taking the victory this afternoon against the Rangers felt like a must for them, even though it probably wasn’t in the grand scheme. Nevertheless, the Mets brought some good vibes back with a 4-1 victory over the Rangers this afternoon.

Carlos Carrasco, finally facing a team that’s not the Astros, bounced back in a big way from his prior two disaster outings, tossing 5.2 innings and only allowing one run on 6 hits and a walk with 8 punchouts. Carrasco didn’t necessarily look dominating, but escaped trouble all afternoon and induced plenty of whiffs from a Rangers lineup that does strikeout quite a bit.

On offense, the Mets still weren’t firing on all cylinders, but they did get buoyed by the home run ball once again. Starling Marte opened the game up with a solo shot, his second straight game with a first inning homer. That was all the Mets could push across against Rangers starter Jon Gray, though, until the fourth. Pete Alonso led off with one of the odder plays of the year when he struck out, but reached first on a wild pitch, and a bad throw by Jonah Heim allowed him to get to second. Jeff McNeil followed with an RBI double to give the Mets the 2-1 lead at the time, and then Eduardo Escobar parked one into the bullpens in right center to extend the lead out to 4-1.

That’s all the Mets pitching needed this afternoon. Joely Rodriguez came in to relieve Carrasco, and entered with two men on and the tying run coming up to bat, but got Kole Calhoun to ground out to second to end the threat. Rodriguez stayed on to pitch a scoreless 7th, Ottavino handled the 8th, and Edwin Díaz worked a scoreless ninth despite allowing two baserunners.

The win put the Mets back to 19 games over .500, and with the Braves losing in Cincinatti, extends their division lead back to 3.5 games.