With two outs in the top half of the 10th inning, the Mets were still looking for a bit more out of the offense to help a stretched back-end of the bullpen take a bit of a breather. With a runner on second, Francisco Alvarez launched a 98 mph fastball the opposite way for a run-scoring triple, the first of his career.
“He’s always on the go,” manager Carlos Mendoza said about the second-year catcher after the Mets held on for a 9-7 win over the Washington Nationals on Monday night.
“I thought that ball was gonna be a homer, and when I saw him going to third base, I’m impressed there,” the manager continued. “But that’s who he is. This is a kid that’s always playing really hard, with a lot of energy and you saw the emotions there when he got to third base. Yeah, we see that [on] both sides of the play, when he’s in the dugout, when he’s in the locker room. He plays with joy, with passion and it means a lot to all of us.”
“I enjoyed the triple a lot,” Alvarez said.
The catcher said he’s “always looking” for that opportunity for a triple and wanted to get one to show he’s “faster than Mark Vientos” because “he didn’t have a triple” yet.
Alvarez struck first in the sixth inning, notching a two-out, two-run double to give the Mets a 3-1 lead. That came Vientos grabbed his second hit of the night with a two-out RBI single.
“Super important,” Mendoza said about the impact Alvarez and Vientos have had on turning around the season. “They’re right in the middle of it. There’s a reason why we started playing better and I don’t think it’s a coincidence with those two contributing the way they’re doing it offensively, it’s pretty impressive.
“They’re more mature and they continue to make adjustments because the league will adjust to them and we see how they’re pitching to them and their at-bats, their approach. Credit to them, obviously.”
The manager isn’t the only one to praise Alvarez and Vientos.
“I think just their ability to step up in those situations where they’re getting put in some tough spots lately and they’re going at it fearlessly,” veteran J.D. Martinez said when asked about what has impressed him most about the duo.
And, of course, while youth has its way. The old man in the clubhouse again showed his value to the Mets on Monday night when the veteran took a 10th-inning 0-2 splitter from Hunter Harvey and blasted it for a 420-foot three-run home run that put New York ahead for good.
“Just trying to get something up because the last thing I want to do is swing at the splitter in the dirt,” the 36-year-old said of his homer. “He threw that fastball up and I felt like I was able to foul it off, so I was just trying to get something up and not chase.”
The round-tripper broke Martinez out of an 0-for-12 skid amid a rough stretch that saw him go 4-for-26 over the last six games.
“I didn’t even know I was 0-for-12, honestly,” Martinez said. “Obviously I’m just grinding at it a little bit right now, just trying to figure it out. I think, for me, it’s just my gather, the rhythm of my gather right now is a little off and it’s making my swing kind of break down in certain places.
“So it’s just one of those things where you just gotta try and figure out ways every night to help the team win until I can figure it out really.”
His manager thought the DH was “a little off today,” but still worked a pair of walks.
“I thought today basically the first couple of at-bats, he was a tick late and he still found a way to walk couple times,” Mendoza said. “And then obviously that three-run homer in extras was huge. That tells you all you need to know how good of a hitter [he is]. He’ll tell you pretty much the same, but he’s grinding right now and still walks twice, three-run homer – that’s what great hitters do.”
And while he has yet to play an inning in the field, the impact of the veteran is not limited to what goes on in the batter’s box.
“It’s huge,” Mendoza said of his impact on the club, including the younger guys on the roster. “Whether it’s one-on-one conversations here inside, in the cages, during batting practice around the cage, just talking about approach, drills, him asking questions to the hitting coaches, the hitting coaches getting feedback from him.
“I think it’s a good thing we got going here and obviously J.D. is a huge part of it.”
Of course, a win and nine runs is one thing, but the night wasn’t a pretty one – from Tyrone Taylor’s miscue on hit to right allowing the Nationals to score the tying run in the eighth to a hairy bottom of the 10th inning that saw the go-ahead run come to the plate.
“A win is a win, right?” Mendoza said with a laugh when asked to sum up Monday’s game.
“It was hard for us at the beginning with [MacKenzie Gore]. We were having a hard time getting to his fastball. We hit some balls hard, but we couldn’t put much together. Obviously better at-bats against their bullpen and then in extras,” he said, referring to Washington’s starter who held the visitors to five hits in 5.2 innings. “After the three-run homer continued with really good at-bats, continued to put pressure, and that was the difference in the game.”
The win put the Mets back at .500 after 82 games of the season.
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