Teams from Queens, S.I. at home in Pa.
Maybe the Mets took some pointers from the Staten Island team that played before them in Williamsport on Sunday.
The big-league club, following in the footsteps of their Little League counterparts, received solid pitching and timely hitting to beat the Phillies, 8-2.
Jason Vargas backed up his previous strong outing against Baltimore with another one, this coming against a much better and surprising Philadelphia ballclub that is a half game back atop the NL East standings.
Vargas went 5.1 innings, allowing six hits and two runs, showing just a little more of what the Mets expected to see when they signed the veteran to a two-year, $16 million contract, though his ERA still sits at an unsightly 7.67.
They had hoped Vargas would eat up some innings every five days at the back of their rotation, best-laid plans that have not come to fruition, of course, as he missed more than a month due to injury and pitched into the sixth inning for only the first time last week. On Sunday he cruised through five and looked on pace to reach a new milestone by possibly pitching into the seventh, but it wasn’t to be. Rhys Hoskins singled with one out in the sixth and then a long home run by Carlos Santana that brought the Little Leaguers in the stands to their feet ultimately sent Vargas off.
The bullpen backed him up, though, with Seth Lugo, Drew Smith and Daniel Zamora going 3.2 scoreless innings, allowing just two hits.
The Mets broke out the bats again against the Phillies, three nights after scoring 24 runs against them, doing it on Sunday instead with small ball, pass-the-baton offense. They notched 14 hits, 13 of which were singles. The only extra-base hit came off the bat of Dominic Smith, who scorched an RBI double to the opposite-field gap in his first appearance for the big-league club since July 15.
In the second inning, four consecutive singles plated the first two Met runs before Vargas laid down a sacrifice bunt to put Kevin Plawecki on second and Jose Bautista on third. Amed Rosario then laced another single, the first of his three hits, to put young Phillies starter Nick Pivetta in an early hole.
Pivetta was bounced with two outs in the fourth after he was charged with two more runs.
Even Vargas had a knock in the sixth inning, and the only Met to not join the hit parade was Michael Conforto, who went 0for-5 despite returning to Williamsport, where he played with his Little League team from Redmond, Washington in 2004. Todd Frazier, who did, in fact, win the Little League Championship with his Toms River, New Jersey squad in 1998, went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts and a run scored.