A native of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, the Mets made Mendoza only the second Major League manager to come out of the country when they hired him to replace Buck Showalter earlier this month. It’s been a popular hire in his home country, according to another native, catcher Francisco Alvarez, who said his friends and family have all started rooting for the Mets because of it.
“It’s pretty much the talk of the country right now,” Alvarez said through translator Alan Suriel Friday at the Mets’ ninth annual Turkey Drive in the Bronx. “Everyone is turning into Mets fans over there. That’s all everyone talks about and they’re, honestly, solely fans of the Mets now because we have a Venezuelan manager. So, it’s obviously something that’s really big in the country.”
Considering there have been 473 players from the country to reach the big leagues, it’s somewhat surprising that the only other manager on that list is Ozzie Guillen, who managed the Chicago White Sox and the Miami Marlins but he hasn’t managed since 2012.
Mendoza was never one of those players. He was a career minor leaguer before becoming a coach in the Yankees organization and working his way up to the bench coach role in 2020, which is often considered the second-highest position in a dugout. It was not an easy path or a linear path to the Majors for Mendoza, but it’s a path that has endeared him to Alvarez.
“I’m super proud of the story, of his background, what it’s taken him to get to this point,” Alvarez said. “It feels really good and I’m really proud of it,” Alvarez said through Suriel. “It brings me a lot of pride and joy that he’s been given this opportunity. I think he’s one of those people that can open the doors for other Venezuelan potential managers in the future because of the skill sets that he has.”
The two have yet to meet in person, but they have a phone conversation already. Mendoza wasted no time in calling up members of the Mets roster after agreeing to terms with the Mets on a three-year contract with a club option for a fourth. Alvarez characterized the conversations as positive with the two of them in the initial process of getting to know one another.
Alvarez, who recently turned 22, has shifted his mindset this winter as he ended his first full big league season. He’s also healthy this winter, having undergone ankle surgery last fall after the Mets were eliminated from the playoffs, which gives him the chance to hone in on certain parts of his game, like defensive elements behind the plate.
Alvarez had a prolific rookie season at the plate hitting 25 home runs, the most ever hit by a rookie backstop in club history. But behind it, he struggled. The Mets were happy with the strides he made in pitch framing and footwork, but he allowed 99 stolen bases and eight passed balls, throwing out only 15.
It’s a point of emphasis for him moving forward.
“My primary focus is obviously winning — going out there and winning each and every game that we can,” Alvarez said. “But also, when I’m on the play I want to be able to limit the damage that the other teams did. I’m really focused on that, and really focused on calling a better game so we don’t give up as many runs as we did.”
Mendoza frequently lauded the Yankees team chefs for their abilities to make Venezuelan food while Alvarez’s teammates lauded him for making lasagna last season. However, for Alvarez’s first American Thanksgiving, he’s letting his mother handle the cooking, saying she’s a better cook than he is.
The Mets handed out over 7,500 turkeys across the five boroughs, helping to feed more than 61,000 people, with Alvarez passing out birds with Mr. and Mrs. Met at Part of the Solution Community Center.
“It feels good because you know that they’re gonna spend days with their families with the things that they need,” he said through Suriel. “To be able to be out here with the Mets, and to be able to help them, it feels good.”
The last time we had no October baseball in New York was 10 seasons ago, in 2014. In 2016, the last time the Yankees didn’t make it to the postseason but the Mets did, we got exactly one October game, even if it was a pretty dramatic Wild Card game between the Mets and the Giants, Noah Syndergaard going toe-to-toe with Madison Bumgarner that night until Jeurys Familia coughed up the Mets season in the 9th.
Now we move up on another dark baseball October, really dark, because of belly flops involving two teams whose combined payroll is over $600 million. All that money, spent on two fourth-place teams. It’s enough wasted money by Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner to make them feel almost as tortured owning local sports teams as the noted Las Vegas entrepreneur, James L. Dolan.
Has there been bad luck for both of our teams? There has, starting even before the regular season began when Edwin Diaz, coming off as great a season as any New York closer ever had, tore up his knee in the World Baseball Classic. Then on the first Saturday night in June, big Aaron Judge injured his big toe running into an outfield wall at Dodger Stadium, and was gone for nearly two months.
The Yankees were 10 games over .500 when Judge got hurt. Somehow they hung in there, and were still six games over .500, 54-48, when Judge returned to the lineup in Baltimore at the end of July. Through Thursday night, they were 23-28 since.
Starting pitchers, big starting pitchers, ended up getting hurt for both teams. Domingo German, the imperfect young man who had pitched a perfect game for the Yankees, ended up in rehab. Anthony Rizzo, one of the good guys, got concussed, a situation that somehow hid in plain sight with the Yankees for a couple of months. Max (We Hardly Knew Ye) Scherzer and Kate Upton’s husband, Mr. Verlander, left town at the trade deadline. So did the immortal Tommy Pham. Pham is a guy now playing for his 8th team in 10 years, but that hasn’t stopped him from acting like the conscience of the 2023 Mets.
What really happened on both sides of the place I started calling Baseball New York a long time ago? A lot. And hardly any of it was good.
But you know who shouldn’t get blamed? The managers.
Buck Showalter is a year removed from leading the Mets to 101 wins and winning manager of the year.
If you really think you can lay all of what we have witnessed over the past six months on Buck Showalter and Aaron Boone, as thrilling as it is for some people to run with the crowd on that, you’ve simply been streaming the wrong movie.
Start with Buck. He was coming off one of the best managing jobs you’ll ever see with the 2022 Mets, somehow taking his team to 101 victories, the same number the Braves won last season. He did that in a season when he ended up getting a total of 34 starts from Scherzer and Wing-and-a-Prayer DeGrom. Even with all that, Mets fans still have a right to wonder how last October would have gone for their team if Scherzer had managed to win the two games he was hired, at very big money, to win:
Scherzer most certainly did not. Had nothing in either game. So the Mets didn’t win the NL East. They ended up losing the Wild Card series to the Padres. This year Buck loses Diaz and does not have nearly enough bullpen behind him. Scherzer got hurt, and suspended for sticky fingers. Verlander started the season hurt. Ninety million tied up in two guys whose combined age is nearly 80. Neither one was a Met after Aug. 1 because Cohen and Billy Eppler, his general manager, waved the white flag at that point.
Now we read and hear that David Stearns, Cohen’s heart’s desire for a while to be head of baseball ops at Citi Field, might want to bring in his own guy to manage the Mets, maybe even his guy Craig Counsell with the Brewers, suddenly discussed as if he’s Joe Torre. You tell me where Stearns is going to find a better one than Buck Showalter, who after last season was named Manager of the Year for the fourth time, in a fourth different decade.
People love to whisper the narrative, just off-stage, that Buck is too old. Is Brian Snitker, who might win another World Series with the Braves after his 68th birthday, too old? Is 74-year old Dusty Baker, who won last year with the Astros, too old? Everybody sees the work Bruce Bochy has done with the Rangers this season. Bochy, who will turn 69 next spring, is a year older than Buck. Is Bruce Bochy too old? You know what all the boy-wonder executives like Stearns should do with great baseball men like these? They should try learning from them.
Aaron Boone was dealt a bad hand from the start with this Yankees team.
And Aaron Boone? Does any fair-minded person look at the construction of this Yankee team — and that means even before Steinbrenner had to pay more than $30 million to make Aaron Hicks and Josh Donaldson go away — and think this is somehow all his doing? The Yankees were hurt by injuries, absolutely, same as the Mets were. But they also came into the season with no left fielder and no viable third baseman and Rizzo being the only left-handed bat with any pop in it. In Yankee Stadium. With a right field wall so close batters feel as if they can touch it with the end of their bat.
The Yankees came into the season with one player, the surpassing No. 99, that anybody really wanted to watch play baseball on a daily basis. They weren’t fast enough, young enough, athletic enough. If Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner try to talk themselves into believing that this season was some kind of outlier, they’re just kidding themselves. The Yankees nearly lost to the Guardians in the playoffs last season, got swept by Astros, and then made one significant addition: Carlos Rodon, who coming into the weekend had made 12 starts and had a 5.90 earned run average because of injuries.
You know who Rodon might turn out to be, if he isn’t a lot better and a lot healthier next season? Another starting pitcher who turns out to have been a lot better somewhere else. If Steinbrenner really does try to blame this on Boone it is simply because he would be willing to blame anybody except his general manager for the current state of the Yankees. I love people pointing fingers at the Yankees analytics department as if all those people hired themselves.
Plenty of bad luck to go around. Plenty of disappointments, on both teams. Plenty of blame to go around. Fixing these two teams is going to be hard. Putting this on Buck and Aaron Boone is way too easy.
MIGHT WANT TO BLOCK MICAH, SALUTE TO SCHWARBER & TIME FOR BIG BLUE TO PLAY SOME DEFENSE …
One of the more interesting aspects of last week’s Jets-Cowboys game was that Nathaniel Hackett, the Jets new offensive coordinator, seemed to be the only person watching that game who didn’t seem to identify the fact that Micah Parsons was running around the field like the second coming of LT.
My pal Stanton always likes to be a glass-half-full guy, so he points out that when it comes to pro football, at least New York isn’t Chicago.
So, to paraphrase Bill Murray in “Caddyshack,” we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
Do Mets fans ever look at the Wild Card race in the National League and find themselves wondering what might have happened if the Mets didn’t sell when they did.
If you’re keeping score at home, the Red Sox are about to hire their fourth general manager since Theo Epstein.
And two of them — Ben Cherington and Dave Dombrowski — won World Series at a place, Fenway, where executives don’t have the same kind of tenure as justices of the Supreme Court.
By the way?
After trading away Mookie Betts, one of the best all-around players in Boston baseball history, maybe the most boneheaded thing that Red Sox have done lately is letting Kyle Schwarber just walk out the door after he tried to help slug them back to the Series in 2021.
If it sounds like I’m stuck on what Schwarber is doing for the Phillies, I am.
Even with the under-.200 batting average Schwarber carried into this weekend series with the Mets, The Schwarb is one of the most valuable players in the sport.
With an historic stat line that will eventually include 200 strikeouts, 100 runs scored, 100 RBI, and more walks through Thursday night (123) than hits (109), all of that going quite nicely with 45 home runs that might still end up being 50.
Every time James Dolan does an interview he reminds you why he shouldn’t do interviews.
The Giants have now given up 40 to the Cowboys, 28 to the Cardinals and 30 to the 49ers.
If they can’t play better defense than this going forward, they are going to finish last in the NFC East.
I’m so used to seeing Deion on television, I kept expecting him to do a walk-on during an old “West Wing” I was watching the other night.
Seriously?
Who thought the real headliner in those Aflac duck commercials was going to end up being Deion and not Nick Saban?
How’s that idiotic 10-year contract that Michigan State gave Mel Tucker after he won a few games looking now?
If the Zach Wilson thing does go south, do we just give Joe Douglas a pass on that?
Jets fans in the media really aren’t familiar with the whole concept of suffering in silence, are they?
All these stories about Travis Kelce trying to get a date with Taylor Swift are already older than Rupert Murdoch.
* * *
Mike Lupica’s new thriller, “12 Months to Live,” co-authored with James Patterson, is on sale Monday.
But despite being stripped of his top two starters, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, along with his closer David Robertson, and continuing without the services of Starling Marte, Buck Showalter has somehow managed to keep the Mets competitive in what amounts to be garbage time for them this season. Part of the reason for that has been the emergence of DJ Stewart and Ronny Mauricio — and along with the expected arrival of top prospects Luisangel Acuna, Drew Gilbert and Christian Scott at some point next season, the near Met future could be a lot brighter than it appeared a month ago.
We talked to a small cadre of scouts and people intimately familiar with the Mets’ minor league system about this group and while their appraisals varied, their one consensus was that Showalter will have considerably more depth to manage with next year. For one thing, they all agreed, the multi-talented Acuna — who hit two homers in a game last Wednesday for AA Binghamton, one of them a 426-foot eye-popping upper deck bomb that just missed clearing the stadium roof — is going to be the Mets second baseman at some point next year, very possibly from the get-go. Assuming so, what would that do for Mauricio, whom Showalter has mostly been playing at second in his late-season big league cameo, and Jeff McNeil, who can play almost anywhere but has mostly been at second?
One theory being espoused has Mauricio playing third and McNeil shuffling between second, left field, right field and DH on an everyday basis. But then what about Brett Baty? So far, Mets GM Billy Eppler has been adamant about not moving Baty off third base despite his struggles defensively there. Baty’s defense has been better since he was recalled from the minors, but now it’s his offense (.212 in 372 plate appearances in the majors as of Saturday) that’s come into question.
One thing about Mauricio: He’s not going to win a Gold Glove no matter where you play him, but the guy is a genuine power and speed threat (.292/23 HR/24 SB at AA Syracuse this year). He’s also a genuine airhead who’s forgotten how many outs there were at least twice in games since his recall, and throughout his career has had a habit of being annoyingly lackadaisical on the basepaths. Those sins won’t stand with Showalter, and if Mauricio hopes to make his considerable talents part of the Mets future he’s going to have to quickly adapt to having his head in the game — all the time, every day.
The consensus on Stewart is that after languishing nine years in the Oriole system, he might finally have found himself, with 10 homers and 21 RBI in 40 games for the Mets following his recall from Syracuse, July 4. However, there are red flags everywhere with him. “Is Stewart real?” was the question I asked and these were the answers I got: “After being the Orioles’ first-round draft pick out of Florida (25th overall in 2015), and never living up to it, I think maybe he’s been humbled,” said one. “His power is legit and he’s got good plate discipline. Not great defensively, but not a liability either. I see him as Buck’s primary lefthanded DH next year.” But said another: “I would counsel Buck not to count on this guy.” He’s a bit overweight, not in the best of shape, and is prone to those soft tissue injuries. (In fact, Stewart has spent 278 days on the injured list in his career and just last week had to sit out three games with an oblique strain.)
While it would appear the Mets will have nice surplus of productive position players next year, the one big determining factor as to whether they can compete for a postseason berth is the depth of their pitching. Given Eppler’s track record of success in Japan, they have to be among the favorites to land the pre-eminent Japanese free agent righthander Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Beyond that they are probably going to need rotation reinforcements from within. But scouts are not particularly high on any of the Mets top pitching prospects — the one exception being the 6-4 righthander Christian Scott, a fifth-round draft pick out of Florida in 2021 whose numbers at AA Binghamton (72 strikeouts, 8 walks, 41 hits, 0.83 WHIP in 11 starts) have been off the charts. “He’s the best they’ve got,” said one scout. “Plus fastball, slider and change. Mid-’90s fastball and slider. Smart kid with real good command. If he doesn’t get hurt, he could be there next year.” (That’s the one concern. Scott was sidelined earlier this year with an ulnar collateral nerve issue.)
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
What in the world has happened in Texas where the Rangers, who were in first place in the AL West from Opening Day until August 26, are in a catastrophic freefall? Suddenly, everything that could go wrong for the Rangers has, and Hall-of-Fame bound manager Bruce Bochy may be wishing he’d stayed retired. Things started to go south for the Rangers on July 18 when their ace Nathan Eovaldi went down with a forearm injury that sidelined him for seven weeks. Since then, the Rangers’ pitching has been universally awful. Max Scherzer, who came over from the Mets for their top prospect Luisangel Acuna, has been of little help and was bombed for three homers and four runs in 1 1/3 innings in his most important start of the year last week against the Astros, who hammered Texas pitchers for 16 homers in a three-game sweep. There is no one in the bullpen (ranked 25th in baseball with a 4.86 ERA), Bochy can count on. On August 6, third baseman Josh Jung, the front runner for AL Rookie of the Year, was hit by a pitch that broke his thumb and has not yet returned, and now the Rangers’ best player, Adolis Garcia, the AL RBI leader, is sidelined indefinitely with a patella strain in his knee. Incredibly, the Rangers, who for 4 1/3 months looked like one of the best teams in baseball, are now probably not going to make the playoffs. … For 28 years Jeffrey Loria was one of the most controversial owners in all of baseball, leaving hundreds of thousands of alienated fans and city officials in his wake after his departures from Montreal and Miami, but now he’s taken the opportunity to tell his side of the story in his recently published memoir “From the Front Row — Reflections of a Major League Baseball Owner and Modern Art “(Post Hill Press). Baseball fans and historians can skip the first half of the book, which is all about Loria’s career as one of the country’s pre-eminent modern art dealers. The second half, however, details Loria’s often tempestuous 28-year run as the last owner of the Expos (before they were sold to Major League Baseball) and then the Marlins that included a world championship over the Yankees in 2003. Some highlights: His frustration with his penurious Canadian partners with the and the great satisfaction he felt when they lost the RICO suit they’d filed against him on every single count; his heartbreak when Marlins ace Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating accident in 2016 and how he almost sold the team because of it; his later regret at having fired Joe Girardi as Marlins manager in 2006 (the year he was NL Manager of the Year) over what he now says was an unfortunate misunderstanding. A native New Yorker who grew up with Mel Allen, in his chapter on broadcasters, Loria has high praise Michael Kay, John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman, David Cone and Paul O’Neill. It’s a terrific read and he even wrote it himself — without the help of any of the baseball scribes who routinely skewered him.
New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone speaks to reporters before a Game 4 of an American League … [+] Championship baseball series at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
In the wake of the New York Yankees capping a tedious 92-win 2021 season with their 6-2 loss in the wild-card game at Fenway Park last year the internet mob and certain voices calling up talk radio wanted someone to be held accountable.
And in most cases since the players cannot necessarily be fired unless a team is willing to absorb the sunken costs of a bloated contract, the person on the firing line was manager Aaron Boone.
A year later after the Yankees saw their season ended with Sunday’s 6-5 loss to Houston in Game 4 of the ALCS, the pattern repeated and perhaps with more vigor.
The hypothetical timeline falls in line with the managerial trends of the Yankees since 1991. The Yankees changed managers 18 times from 1973 to 1991, a timeline that included five stints for Billy Martin and two apiece for Bob Lemon and Lou Piniella.
Then they hired Buck Showalter, whose four seasons started the run of winning seasons. After Showalter would not accept the firing of coaches following Edgar Martinez’s series-ending single on Oct. 8, 1995 in the Kingdome, he departed and in came Joe Torre.
Torre lasted 12 seasons, winning four titles and getting six pennants but it ended badly. With the Yankees facing elimination from the ALDS on Oct. 7, his job was considered to be in jeopardy and about two weeks after they were eliminated in four games by Cleveland, Torre was officially ousted despite getting the support of his players, including Mariano Rivera.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Rivera said Oct. 10, 2007 at a postmortem inside the old Yankee locker room at Yankee Stadium. “The kind of person he is and the kind of manager he is, I don’t see why they’re even thinking about it. If you ask me what I will want, I want him back. I’ve been with Joe for so many years.”
About a month after Rivera’s words of support, Joe Girardi came in, offering more of a sense of rigidness but also some tension at times, especially in 2008 as the Yankees played their final season at the Old Yankee Stadium. Eventually Girardi lasted through the 2017 season, but his personality was viewed as deciding factor for not being retained after a surprising run to Game 7 of the ALCS in Houston, which later was revealed to be stealing signs
A little over 15 years later after Torre’s exit, came the news of Hal Steinbrenner telling the Associated Press he intended to keep Boone much to the consternation of large swaths of fans, who booed him at various points through the regular season and postseason and even during a ceremony to honor Paul O’Neill on Aug. 21 — the day after Boone pounded the table in the interview room following a 5-2 loss to Toronto.
While Steinbrenner’s comments emerged Wednesday in Tampa, so did some differing comments by Rivera, who said the following at Sports Forum of the Panamanian Association of Business Executives:
“If I’m the owner Aaron Boone would not stay. When things don’t come out the way we want them to, all of the fault goes on the manager. Somebody has to pay the price and we won’t put that on the players.”
Whether player performance can be blamed on the manager is an age-old debate that goes up there with who is considered the greatest of all time in a given sport. After all, the manager is not taking the at-bats that result in Aaron Judge going 5-for-32 in the postseason following a 62-homer season or Josh Donaldson going 5-for-29, which is a point Derek Jeter noted when speaking to reporters at his Turn 2 Foundation Benefit.
“Sometimes, when you’re in a situation like that, you’re in a no-win situation unless you win. But I like Aaron. I haven’t been around. I had my head down in Miami for 4 1/2 years. I wasn’t paying close attention. But I like Aaron, and, look, he puts them in a position every year to have that chance to win. Ultimately, it comes down to the players, right?”
And in this day and age, it is a strong possibility Boone was not the one deciding to play three different shortstops and an unprecedented four leadoff hitters during a nine-game postseason run.
One thing is certain, based on what Steinbrenner told the Associated Press, Boone will be in the dugout.
And six days after the World Series ends with Houston or Philadelphia as a champion, comes the mission of making sure Judge is a Yankee on Opening Day next season and not elsewhere, notably the San Francisco Giants – who just happen to be the opponent in the season opener.
But on Sunday night, they might’ve lost a little dignity, too.
Trailing the Padres 4-0 in the final game of the best-of-three series, the Mets apparently griped that San Diego pitcher Joe Musgrove was shutting them down with the help of a foreign substance to doctor the baseball.
So Mets manager Buck Showalter had the umps check him out ― including his ears, which were glistening with what the team and its fans seemed to think was more than just sweat.
The umps stopped the game and gathered around the mound. One ump checked out Musgrove’s hat, glove… and ears.
You can see Musgrove gamely playing along and his various teammates’ reactions ― including one who shakes his head in disbelief:
Mets manager Buck Showalter asked the umpires to check Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove for foreign substances after it appeared Musgrove’s ears were shiny. pic.twitter.com/U6alihJnfD
After the game, Showalter was unapologetic, saying the team is “privy” to more information, that he “loves” Musgrove as a pitcher and that he feels “kind of bad about it,” according to the LA Times.
“I’m charged with doing what’s best for the New York Mets,” he said. “If it makes me look however it makes me look or whatever, I’m going to do it every time and live with the consequences.”
One of the more immediate consequences was this reaction from Musgrove after he got out of the inning:
“I mean, I get it dude,” Musgrove said after the game. “They’re on their last leg, they’re desperate. They’re doing everything they can to get me out of the game at that point. It is what it is.”
It wouldn’t be the first time Musgrove was part of a cheating club: He was on the infamous 2017 Astros, which used an elaborate ― and illegal ― sign-stealing scheme as they ultimately won a World Series that even Musgrove himself isn’t proud of.
“I still don’t feel great about wearing that ring around or telling people that I was a World Series champion on that team,” he admitted to the Associated Press last week. “I want one that feels earned and that was a true championship. So that’s the goal.”
He ultimately threw seven innings, giving up just one hit and a walk while recording five strikeouts as the Padres won 6-0 to advance to the next round.
But on Twitter, all the talk was about Musgrove’s ear-check:
The umpires were rubbing Joe Musgrove’s ears on national television. No notes.
NEW YORK — With the Mets needing a comeback in the pressure of a tight pennant race, Eduardo Escobar was a one-man show.
Escobar homered and drove in five late runs — including the game-winning single in the 10th inning — to rally New York past the Miami Marlins 5-4 on Wednesday night and back into sole possession of first place in the NL East.
By overcoming a four-run deficit, the Mets moved a game ahead of the Braves heading into a three-game showdown between the teams in Atlanta this weekend. The defending World Series champions lost 3-2 in 10 innings at last-place Washington, one night after pulling even with the Mets.
“It’s going to be huge. Obviously, this is pretty much deciding the division,” winning pitcher Drew Smith said. “I’m sure it’s going to be as close to a playoff atmosphere as you can get without being in the playoffs.”
Of course, Hurricane Ian could affect the schedule in Atlanta, where the teams are set to square off Friday night following a mutual off day. Both clubs have six games remaining in the only division race not decided.
One win at Truist Park would give the Mets the season-series tiebreaker over Atlanta.
After this weekend, New York finishes the regular season with three home games against Washington, while the Braves play at Miami.
On this night, the Mets fell behind 4-0 but Escobar hit a two-run homer in the seventh and tied it on a two-run single with two outs in the eighth.
“He’s a catalyst,” Smith said.
Both those big hits came right-handed. The switch-hitter was batting from the left side when his RBI single off Dylan Floro (1-3) in the 10th scored automatic runner Francisco Lindor from second base — after an intentional walk to Jeff McNeil brought Escobar to the plate with two on and one out.
“A little bit of the force, a little bit of the matchup, and you trust Flo what he’s going to do,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly explained. “Pretty much Escobar all night.”
It was the first time a Mets player had at least five RBIs and knocked in all their runs in a walk-off win. After a slow start to his first season in New York, Escobar is batting .330 with eight homers and 24 RBIs in September.
“The answer’s probably nothing other than he just never gave in,” manager Buck Showalter said. “He never gives in. Was the same guy every day.”
Smith (3-3) struck out two in a perfect inning for the win.
Jesús Luzardo mowed down the Mets for six innings, striking out Pete Alonso three times and taking a two-hit shutout into the seventh.
But then McNeil led off with a single and Escobar chased the left-hander with a drive to left field that gave him his fifth career 20-homer season.
Marlins reliever Tanner Scott, pitching for the first time since Sept. 16, walked three batters in the eighth to load the bases and Escobar grounded a two-run single off Richard Bleier through an open right side with two outs to tie it 4-all.
Alonso raised both arms after sliding headfirst across home plate, and a fired-up Escobar pumped his fist and pounded his chest in excitement as he shouted toward the Mets’ dugout.
Bryan De La Cruz hit a two-run homer off starter Taijuan Walker and finished a triple short of the cycle for the fourth-place Marlins. JJ Bleday had a sacrifice fly, and Brian Anderson added an RBI double.
STORM WATCH
Showalter sounded a little annoyed that no schedule adjustments had been made yet to the series in Atlanta to help the teams get all three games in this weekend or avoid a potential makeup doubleheader.
“All that’s up to Atlanta. We don’t have much input at all. I mean, can’t you tell?” Showalter said. “It’s not our home game.”
Showalter said the Mets were planning to bring a taxi squad to Atlanta as insurance — in case rough weather makes it difficult to get reinforcements there for an injured player, for example.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Marlins: SS Miguel Rojas sat out after leaving Tuesday night’s game in the seventh inning when tendinitis flared up in his right wrist and affected his throwing hand and forearm. … LHP Steven Okert (tender biceps) threw a bullpen.
Mets: There’s still no timetable for the return of All-Star RF Starling Marte, sidelined since Sept. 7 with a partially broken middle finger on his right (throwing) hand. He received an injection and remains in a splint but is still feeling some discomfort. “I know it’s frustrating for him,” Showalter said. “He just needs to get to a point where he can grip a ball and grip a bat. Not there yet.” … RHP Mychal Givens had two strikeouts in a scoreless inning during a rehab outing for Triple-A Syracuse.
UP NEXT
Marlins: Another chance to play spoiler when they open a four-game series Thursday night at Milwaukee, which is chasing an NL wild card. LHP Braxton Garrett (3-6, 3.52 ERA) faces Brewers LHP Eric Lauer (10-7, 3.96).
Mets: RHP Jacob deGrom (5-3, 2.93 ERA) is scheduled to pitch the series opener in Atlanta against LHP Max Fried (13-7, 2.50), who is 2-2 with a 3.00 ERA in four starts vs. the Mets this season. New York is 9-7 versus the Braves, including 3-4 in Atlanta.
———
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports
