QUEENS, NY — Jesse Winker’s first-inning grand slam and a four-run eighth inning predicated on erratic Boston Red Sox relievers clinched the New York Mets’ seventh straight win on Wednesday night at Citi Field, 8-3.
“This feels good,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “But there’s a lot of games left, there’s a lot of good teams in the race, but the mindset continues to be the same. One game at a time… We have to come every day, be prepared. I like how the guys are going about their business.”
Winker’s early blast held up for most of the night with the hosts holding a 4-3 lead entering their final turn at-bat before Boston’s Kenley Jansen and Rich Hill walked five Mets in the bottom of the eighth, including four-in-a-row and three straight with the bases loaded to plate runs. Harrison Bader’s sacrifice fly gave the Mets a fourth run in the frame.
“Right now it’s about winning baseball games any way you can,” Winker said. “That was a complete game.”
New York’s slim lead was held intact for most of the night much in part to five scoreless innings from the relievers Alex Young, Huascar Brazoban, Danny Young, Phil Maton, and Edwin Diaz after starter Tylor Megill failed to keep a four-run lead comfortably.
While the Mets continue to stack up wins — they are now a season-high 12-games over .500 (76-64) — they remain tantalizingly close to a playoff spot but remain a half-game behind the Atlanta Braves for the third and final Wild Card spot in the National League.
New York was able to get to Red Sox starter Tanner Houck, who had been Boston’s ace this season with a 3.12 ERA entering Wednesday night, from the jump. The righty loaded the bases before recording a single out when singles by Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos sandwiched a Brandon Nimmo walk.
After Pete Alonso struck out, Winker lined a 2-2 splitter from Houck the other way that just cleared the left-center-field fence to clear the bases. It was Winker’s 14th home run of the season, his third with the Mets, and his fifth career grand slam.
“I was just trying to get something over the plate that I could hit up in the air,” Winker said. “He threw me a lot of really tough pitches. I was just happy that one got out.”
Megill gave three right back in the third inning when he yielded three straight hits to lead off the frame — the last of them being an RBI double by Jarren Duran to get Boston on the board. Rafael Devers and Wilyer Abreu each hit sacrifice flies to get the visitors within one.
Following a lead-off single by Emmanuel Valdez in the fifth, Megill was quickly pulled by Mendoza for reliever Alex Young, who got through the inning unscathed. Megill threw just 67 pitches in what is expected to be his final start before returning to Triple-A with Paul Blackburn expected to come back from the injured list next week.
“Once we got [four innings], I was going to try and stop him as quick as possible,” Mendoza said of the quick hook of Megill. “We got four there, a big hit by Winker… we just had to try and stop it there and give us a chance to win somehow.
Mets bats went silent following Winker’s slam, getting just two hits in their next 20 plate appearances stretching into the seventh inning — their one-run lead still intact thanks to a bullpen that saw three different relievers (Young, Brazoban, and Danny Young) coax three inning-ending double plays in the fifth, sixth, and seventh.
After Danny Young got Boston’s No. 1 and 2 hitters in Duran and Devers, Mendoza called on Maton to see out the eighth. Instead, he allowed two straight singles to Rob Refsnyder and Tyler O’Neill to put runners at the corners but got Masataka Yoshida to line out softly to Lindor at short.
“They did a hell of a job, all of those guys,” Mendoza said. “They kept making pitches. We turned three double plays when we needed because they continued to execute, they didn’t panic. Overall, we did a lot of good things.”
Jansen helped put the Mets in the driver’s seat in the eighth when he walked Nimmo and yielded a single to Vientos to put two on with no outs. After striking out Alonso, he walked Winker and Taylor to bring in a run. Hill, a former Met, was called upon in an attempt to stop the bleeding, but he walked Jeff McNeil and Francisco Alvarez to make it a 7-3 game before Bader’s sacrifice fly.
“Those at-bats against Jansen were really, really good,” Mendoza said. “We’re doing a lot of good things and we need to continue to do that to get where we want to be.”
