Three homers a charm for Mets
There were a lot of interesting subplots for the Mets on Wednesday night.
The game was a chance at redemption of sorts for Noah Syndergaard and Dominic Smith. Syndergaard sought to bounce back from a loss where the Phillies basically held a track meet on the basepaths, collecting five steals.
For Smith, the game was a chance to perhaps star in an internet video doing something other than colliding with a teammate on defense.
And then there was Jeff McNeil, who sought not redemption but a continuation of some ridiculous success. All succeeded.
Syndergaard worked six innings, yielding two runs — and no steals — while recording his team-high ninth victory; Smith slugged one of the Mets’ three solo homers; and McNeil ran his at-bat hit streak to eight before cooling down. Add it all up and the Mets had a 5-3 victory at Citi Field.
“Nobody stole any bases, so that’s a step in the right direction, and encouraging. Doing some work on the side, I’m trying to be quicker to home plate, just kind of fine-tune the rest of my delivery — even in the windup. I just felt like I was real fluid out there, and had great rhythm,” said Syndergaard (9-3), who gave up five hits and one walk while striking out six. “Overall, I felt great.”
Pitchers tend to feel real spiffy when they get support.
“He threw the ball well. He had great stuff,” manager Mickey Callaway said. “We saw, maybe a little uptick in [velocity] … but his off-speed stuff was good.”
In this case, the Mets unloaded homers by Smith in the second inning, Jose Bautista in the fourth inning and Todd Frazier in the seventh inning. For Smith, it was particularly sweet after his horrifying botch-up Monday when he ran into Amed Rosario, allowing the winning run to score in the 13th inning. Then he sat Tuesday.
“You want to have a short memory, obviously, because we have games every day,” said Smith, who pulverized the first pitch from Casey Kelly (0-2) in the second inning into the second deck in right. “I care about the team. I care about the fans and I don’t want to let anybody down. I just want to play hard, so you do think about that stuff [the error] and you do feel bad, but you kind of just have to forget about those things and rebound from it.”
It worked this time, as Smith said he applied a “short and quick” swing to ignite a threerun inning that also contained an RBI single by McNeil, who said he swung at a 3-0 pitch for the first time in his professional life, along with a RBI double by Frazier that nearly brought in two runs. The hit was reviewed, found to be a ground-rule double and McNeil was sent back to third.
“That was big for him,” Callaway said of Smith’s shot. “Obviously, he probably hasn’t performed the way he’d like to this year, at the Major League level, and … it gives him some confidence.”
For McNeil, eight straight hits is a rookie team record and one shy of the overall Mets record held by Jose Vizcaino and John Olerud.
“I felt really good. … First atbat, he left a changeup out over the plate, was able to drive it. Next at bat got to 3-0 and I was looking for middle fastball and got it,” McNeil said.
The Giants used three hits, including an RBI single by Joe Panik, plus an RBI groundout by Steven Duggar to make it 3-2 in the third. After that solo homers ruled. Bautista hit his 11th, a two-out shot to left, for a 4-2 lead. San Francisco’s Austin Slater, the first man reliever Drew Smith faced, smacked his first homer of the year making it 4-3 in the seventh but Frazier got it right back with a two-out drive, his 13th, in the bottom of the inning off Hunter Strickland to make it 5-3.
Paul Sewald, the fifth Mets reliever, got the last two outs for his first career save.