YO CANNOT BE SERIOUS!

Ces homers, finishes single shy of cycle, exits with tight quad

SAN DIEGO — It hasn’t been an easy month for Yoenis Cespedes, and that doesn’t even take the Cuban slugger putting his foot in his mouth about his love of the Oakland A’s into consideration. After coming off the disabled list, Cespedes rode a slump into the All-Star break and heading into Tuesday night’s game had not hit a home run in over a month.

But that all changed when he homered in his first at-bat and drove in three runs as the Mets beat the Padres, 6-5. That gave the Mets (4751) their second straight win and their sixth in their last seven games.

The first-inning homer off rookie right-hander Kyle Lloyd snapped his streak of 87 at-bats without a dinger. Aside from that solo shot, he had an RBI-double in the fifth and an RBI-triple that drove in the goahead run. He scored an insurance run on a throwing error on that play in the seventh, which proved to be the difference. Cespedes was double-switched out after his heads-up baserunning on the triple. Cespedes told Terry Collins his quad tightened up after scoring. “I think he’ll be fine, but we want to be cautious,” Collins said. He said it was too soon to say if Cespedes would play Wednesday. Travis d’Arnaud and Asdrubal Cabrera drove in the other Met runs. Cespedes’ double gave the Mets a brief 4-3 lead, the second lead he would give Seth Lugo on the night. Lugo had given away the 1-0 lead on two homers in the second: a solo shot to Hunter Renfroe (his third homer in as many at-bats dating back to Monday night) and a two-run shot to Allen Cordoba. Lugo went six innings even though he wasn’t exactly sharp.