The Mets badly needed to start hitting homers, and they did it Saturday night. Pete Alonso and Michael Conforto beamed low-slung lasers out of the park, and J.D. Davis hit a late three-run homer to ice the team’s 8-4 home win over the Marlins.
With their second win in three games, the Mets improved to 6-9, the third-worst record in the National League.
That the first two came against a pitcher who had never pitched above AA before Saturday night? Best not to dwell on it. But if the Mets deserve a demerit for their homers off the meatless Marlins, then the Phillies and Orioles deserve expulsion. Despite a coronavirus outbreak that put Miami on an eight-day hiatus and forced 18 replacements on the major-league roster, the ragtag Marlins had won six straight, with five of those wins coming this week after their return. And an inexperienced starter is no guarantee of success for the Mets, who lost despite facing Humberto Mejia — who had never pitched above High-A before — on Friday night.
The Marlins started Daniel Castano Saturday, their MLB-record ninth different starter in their first nine games. (Miami had somehow won seven of those first eight starts.) The Mets duly tagged Castano for five runs, four earned, in 4.1 innings. It was an overdue outburst for the homer-starved Mets.
Davis’ homer continued a red-hot start. Manager Luis Rojas called him “so disciplined” and a “model” after the game. Davis knocked in four runs Saturday night and has a 12-game hitting streak.
Davis said Saturday he’s been trying to be more aggressive, with a “yes-yes-no mentality: Be ready to hit and then take if I have to.”
Alonso’s was the second-hardest hit ball in MLB this year, according to Statcast, at 116.9 miles per hour. (Alonso displaced … himself at the No. 2 spot behind Giancarlo Stanton.) It went out of the park pretty much as quickly as possible, barely clearing the orange line in left field. With the season a quarter over, Alonso has just two home runs, although he’s showed signs of life recently with five hits in his last four games. Yoenis Cespedes’ departure let Alonso take over the DH job, which gives Dom Smith an opportunity at first base.
The Mets lived by the dinger last year, ranking sixth in the National League with a franchise-record 242. While it appears that the baseball is slightly less juiced this year, possibly causing a league-wide decrease in home runs and offense in general, the Mets are still underperforming relative to their peers and their old selves. Coming into Saturday night’s game, they had hit 13 homers this summer, which is 9th in the NL and 12th when you measure per-game — the more important number considering several teams have missed significant time due to various coronavirus outbreaks.
There was another long-missed sight on Saturday night: Robert Gsellman. The reliever hadn’t pitched in a major-league game since Aug. 11 of last year. He was shut down for the home stretch in 2019 with a right triceps/lat injury, then had his 2020 debut delayed with soreness in the same area. With the Mets’ bullpen struggling — even Jeurys Familia, who had been a rare bright spot the last two weeks, gave up two runs on Saturday — Gsellman gives them another option, at the very least. He struck out two batters on 13 pitches in a drama-free seventh inning on Saturday night.
“You can see the movement from the side, it’s just nasty,” Rojas said about Gsellman. “The sinker was just sinking at the very last moment at a high velocity.”
Familia’s poor sixth tightened the game and the chairs of every Mets fan, cutting the home lead to 5-4. But Davis got in on the action, hitting a 400-foot, first-pitch blast off Josh A. Smith. The Mets cruised home from there, with Seth Lugo and Justin Wilson shutting out the Marlins in the eighth and ninth.
Rojas said that all Mets relievers will likely be available on Sunday.
Rookie David Peterson was solid again for the third straight start, earning his second major league win. He gave up two runs and four hits in five innings. With Noah Syndergaard out for the season and Marcus Stroman still working his way back, Peterson has provided stability for a rotation that was hurting for it.
It was the Marlins’ first loss since July 25, and only the Mets’ second home win. They have a prime opportunity for another one Sunday with Jacob deGrom starting.
