QUEENS — On a night that featured shambolic starting pitching, an ejection for sticky stuff, and runs galore despite Pete Alonso and Aaron Judge being stuck on the injured list, the Yankees took the first game of the two-game Subway Series at Citi Field on Tuesday night with a 7-6 victory over the Mets.
“The buzz around Mets, Yankees, you can feel that in the building,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “To have a lot of really cool, big moments in that game and to have everyone have a hand in it, those are fun.”
The Mets (31-36) left a total of 11 runners on base in the loss, including a bases-loaded, one-out opportunity in the bottom of the eighth inning. But both Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte were struck out on full counts by Yankees reliever Clay Holmes.
Seemingly finding new ways to lose having dropped nine of their last 10, the Mets jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the third inning against a struggling Luis Severino, but Max Scherzer continued his alarming trend of bad starts and was tagged for five runs in the fourth inning to let the Yankees (39-29) take control.
And yet it still wasn’t the worst thing that happened to a Mets pitcher on Tuesday night. Coming in from the bullpen to start the seventh inning, reliever Drew Smith was ejected before he could even get to the mound by umpire Rob Drake after he failed a sticky substance check.
It came one inning after Brandon Nimmo missed an Anthony Volpe fly ball in center field that ultimately led to the Yankees’ go-ahead run, which came on a Josh Donaldson sacrifice fly to make it 7-6.
“I just missed it,” Nimmo said. “I don’t really know exactly why… But I went back and I looked and my head was down on the ball. It’s not like I didn’t watch it… it cost us the game.”
Giancarlo Stanton’s first-inning moonshot of a round-tripper, which came on a hanging Scherzer slider that sat middle-middle, was canceled out by a disastrous outing from Severino, who entered Tuesday night having allowed 11 earned runs over his previous two starts (nine innings).
On just the second pitch Severino threw in the bottom of the first inning, Nimmo lasered his eighth career lead-off home run into the bullpen in right-center field. Following a pair of walks, Brett Baty knocked a run-scoring single up the middle to score Francisco Alvarez.
The Mets further pounced on Severino in the second after Mark Canha lined a one-out double to left and Nimmo was plunked in the elbow. Severino balked — one of two times in the frame — to move the runners into scoring position and with two outs, Jeff McNeil bounced a single to the right of a staggering DJ LeMahieu at third to score a pair and put the hosts up 4-1.
Calamitous Yankees play continued into the third when, with two runners on and one out, Luis Guillorme’s grounder looked as though it would be an inning-ending double play. But it was booted by Gleyber Torres at second before Volpe’s throw was airmailed, allowing Guillorme to be safe at first to load the bases.
But the Mets would only come away with one after Canha beat out a double play to score Marte, who led the inning off with a single — and then Scherzer let the Bronx Bombers right back in.
DJ LeMahieu managed to burn the Mets co-ace again with the long ball, following up an Anthony Rizzo lead-off single in the fourth with a two-run shot to left for his seventh of the year to draw the Yankees back within two. Like Stanton’s dinger, LeMahieu jumped on a Scherzer slider, which continued to look flat.
“He’s a tough pitcher, a really tough pitcher, but I thought we did a really good job,” LeMahieu said. “We took advantage of a couple of mistakes.”
“Every time I was throwing my slider, it was hanging,” Scherzer added. “I wasn’t executing it the way I needed it to, especially with two strikes. I wasn’t getting it in the locations that I wanted to no matter what my thought process was.”
After two straight singles, Volpe snuck a double down the left-field line to draw the Yankees within one before Jake Bauers’ bloop single put the visitors ahead 6-5 to end Scherzer’s night with just one out in the fourth.
Severino wouldn’t make it out of the fifth despite manager Aaron Boone giving him every opportunity to do so. Allowing a 10-pitch single to Brett Baty sandwiched by two outs, the righty was allowed to stay in at 102 pitches to face the left-handed Luis Guillorme, who proceeded to rip an opposite-field single to tie the game at six.
Nimmo’s glove, or lack of it, cost the Mets in the sixth when he missed a one-out fly ball hit by Volpe with a runner on first, which remarkably was not scored as an error, but a double instead to put runners on second and third. One batter later, Donaldson’s sacrifice fly put the Yankees back in front for good.
