d’ARNOOO!!

Mets castoff’s 3rd HR with 2 outs in 9th stuns Yanks, cuts AL East lead to 5

Travis d’Arnaud — cut after 23 at-bats with the Mets this year — watches his two-out, ninth-inning homer off Aroldis Chapman (inset),) turning a two-run Yankees lead into a crushing 5-4 loss. The ex-Met drove in all five runs for the Rays.

Travis d’Arnaud is doing what the Mets dreamed of this year: helping in a playoff race, hitting for average and power, and absolutely killing the Yankees while he’s at it. All it took was getting out of Queens. The catcher delivered three home runs Monday night for the Rays, the third a three-run, two-out, two-strike shot in the ninth inning to capture a 5-4 win over the Yankees in The Bronx.

“It’s the coolest night ever,” d’Arnaud said, calling it the No. 1 (regular-season, he later clarified) game of his career, with No. 2 being when he cracked a walk-off home run against the Yankees on July 6 at Tropicana Field.

D’Arnaud’s first two homers were solo shots that had put the Rays up 2-0 after three innings, though it appeared they would go to waste after the Yankees had come back in the eighth inning.

But the first two Rays reached on singles in the ninth off Aroldis Chapman. The Yankees closer secured the next two outs, bringing d’Arnaud to the plate. He worked a full count and on the eighth pitch of his at-bat, a slider, he lofted a fly ball to right field that kept sailing just far enough into the porch to stun the Yankee Stadium crowd.

In 11 games against the Yankees this season, d’Arnaud is now hitting .314 (11for-35) with four home runs and a 1.143 OPS. While d’Arnaud said he doesn’t yet consider himself a Yankees-killer — “Come on,” he said — he has certainly punished them on the Mets’ dime. The Rays are paying him the prorated minimum while the Mets were on the hook for the rest of his $3.52 million salary after designating him for assignment and releasing him in early May.

“He’s played in this environment, you can’t deny that,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that haven’t. Travis has. ... That certainly has got to play a factor and help him when he’s gotten some of these big opportunities to come through.”

D’Arnaud, who said he nearly missed the team bus to Yankee Stadium Monday afternoon, has nine home runs this season, all of them with the Rays. His first on Monday led off the game and he added another off James Paxton in the third.

The 30-year-old was 2-for-23 in 10 games coming back from Tommy John surgery when the Mets gave up on him. He signed with the Dodgers but was soon traded to the Rays because “we didn’t have any more catchers [due to injuries],” Cash said bluntly.

Now, d’Arnaud is thriving in his new home, with “being able to play” a big factor, he said.

“I know after 50 at-bats, I started feeling more comfortable. I don’t know why, but that was the number,” d’Arnaud said. “I don’t like comparing the teams I’ve been on, but I will say that there’s a lot of energy here. There’s a lot of hope. A lot of fight.”