To boot, these omens and success have conjured familiar feelings, ones the Mets had at this time a year ago when they began a roll to the NL pennant.
Advertisement
The results were pretty darn good, anyway, for a second straight night.
Hermine had taken a pass on Sunday Night Baseball at Citi Field – no hint of a tropical drenching and the wind was pretty tame for the game at just 10 miles per hour. Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo both pitched very well in the two wins, but it was Granderson who was the big difference-maker in the series.
Washington had opened a 10½-game cushion over the second-place Mets going into Saturday.
Cincinnati (57-78) took two of three from the wild-card contending St. Louis Cardinals over the weekend at Great American Ball Park. After a slow start in New York, Bruce has come on lately. It was his third homer in his last 13 games and it broke a streak of three hitless outings.
Curtis Granderson produced the Mets’ first three runs Sunday with a sacrifice fly in the first inning and a two-run homer in the third inning. Jay Bruce launched a two-run, opposite-field homer, one of three hits in the bottom of the sixth. He far outdueled rookie Reynaldo Lopez and held the Nationals to one run in seven innings. Bruce’s two-run, opposite-field homer extended the lead to 5-1 in the sixth. The 2006 Mets set the mark of 96 at Shea. After loading the bases in the first, he took something off a 92-mph fastball to get Wilson Ramos to hit a chopper that Rene Rivera fielded for a force out at the plate.
Update II: Latos impressed in his first inning of relief.
In the second, Danny Espinosa blasted a homer into the second deck in right field, but that’s as much damage as the Nats could do against Lugo.
All Lugo has done since then is go 3-1 with a 2.19 ERA in four starts.
Granderson drove in three runs. Nationals RHP Max Scherzer and Mets RHP Bartolo Colon, who are scheduled to pitch against the Braves and Cincinnati Reds, respectively, on Monday afternoon, traveled ahead of their teammates to Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati.
In four starts on at least six days of rest, including Opening Day, Scherzer has allowed seven runs across 27 innings (2.33 ERA) and posted 26 strikeouts to six unintentional walks. They emerged with a 5-1 win in the rubber game.
Back in the first, Jose Reyes worked a leadoff walk and moved to second on a single by Asdrubal Cabrera.
Lopez struck out Yoenis Cespedes on a full-count changeup for the first out. That’s the longest such streak for any player in Major League Baseball history to begin their career against the Mets, passing Tony Gwynn, who did so in his first 15 outings against them.
“Are we going to get in there at three o’clock in the morning or at 4:30?” Mets manager Terry Collins wondered before the game.
Hermine had taken a pass on Sunday Night Baseball at Citi Field – no hint of a tropical drenching and the wind was pretty tame for the game at just 10 miles per hour.
Granderson hit his 23rd homer.
Advertisement
Bruce has hit under.200 since coming over from Cincinnati.
