The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Cespedes leads Mets to 7th straight win
MIAMI — On the brink of franchise history, the Mets engaged in a late-inning, homer-happy backand-forth — and won.
The Mets beat the Marlins 8-6 Tuesday night for their seventh win in a row. Yoenis Cespedes chopped a tworun double down the leftfield line in the ninth to put his team ahead.
At 9-1, the Mets are off to the best 10-game start in their 57-season history. The 2006 and 1985 teams went 8-1 before dropping their next one.
The teams will play again Wednesday night as the Mets look for a sweep of their six-game trip.
Cespedes has two hits and 13 strikeouts in his last 22 at-bats, but both of the hits were game-winners — his 12th-inning single Sunday night against Washington and his ninth-inning hit Wednesday. The double bounced past third baseman Brian Anderson and rolled slowly down the line, allowing Michael Conforto to score from first.
Jeurys Familia pitched a perfect ninth for his sixth save. It was a B-day for the bullpen, with several of the top arms unavailable, but Paul Sewald, Hansel Robles and Familia contributed scoreless appearances.
Setting the stage for Cespedes’ dramatics were a series of homers from both sides. Justin Bour hit a pair of two-run shots, both giving Miami the lead. In the eighth, Wilmer Flores and Asdrubal Cabrera had solo shots to tie it.
Cabrera also had a basesempty homer in the fourth. It was the 22nd time a Met homered from both sides of the plate in a game. The last? Cabrera on Aug. 26, 2016, vs. Philadelphia.
Jacob deGrom lasted six innings and gave up four runs, his outing much like Noah Syndergaard’s Monday: clean and efficient early, messy late. After cruising through the opening three innings on 38 pitches, deGrom stranded two runners in scoring position in the fourth, winning an 11-pitch at-bat against rookie Braxton Lee.
The Marlins struck for four runs in the fifth in a sequence that amounted to some bad luck and one big hit. Of five batted balls, two went off third baseman Todd Frazier and one was a sacrifice fly to center. Then Bour struck with his first homer.
DeGrom threw 101 pitches (66 strikes), hitting triple digits for the second time in three starts.
Mets starters still have not recorded an out in the seventh inning.
Marlins left-hander Caleb Smith, acquired in an offseason trade with the Yankees, needed 27 pitches in the first inning but wound up with a line comparable to deGrom’s: five innings, three runs.
The Mets jumped out to a three-run lead with lone runs in the first, fourth and fifth. Flores’ first-inning double scored Conforto. Cabrera homered — a laser to left field, complete with a bat flip and slow walk toward first — in the fourth. Conforto singled home Amed Rosario in the fifth.
Sewald’s appearance (one-third of an inning) was his first since April 1. Mickey Callaway said before the game that Sewald is “perfectly fine” health-wise and just hadn’t had a chance to get into a game.