Mets tumble to Nationals in 11th as Tyler Rogers surrenders go-ahead inside-the-park home run
The Nationals' Daylen Lile, right, reacts after scoring on his inside-the-park home run as Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez looks on during the 11th inning at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Mets came into the day 0-65 in games in which they trailed after the eighth inning — earning the ignominious accomplishment of being the only team in baseball without a ninth-inning comeback win.
No. 66 might have stung the most.
The Mets rallied to tie the Nationals in the ninth, but Daylen Lile’s inside-the-park home run off Tyler Rogers in the 11th sealed their fate as they lost, 5-3, at Citi Field Saturday afternoon.
The Mets committed two errors, leading to two unearned runs, and Cedric Mullins misplayed the home run, though it likely would have driven in one run regardless. The Mets left 13 men on base and were 3-for-16 with runners in scoring position.
The Reds, who hold the tiebreaker in the season series against the Mets, beat the Cubs and moved within one game of the Mets for the third and final wild-card spot. The Diamondbacks, who also hold a tiebreaker, are two games behind the Mets. The Giants, who’d be eliminated in a tie with the Mets, are four games back with seven games remaining.
“It’s a battle,” Mullins said. “Everyone knows that, so you try to relieve the pressure that comes with it and play the right way. I think it’s the biggest part of success and coming out on top.”
The Mets trailed by three runs in the eighth before Mark Vientos’ two-run double got them to within a run. Ryan Helsley, seemingly vanquishing the demons that plagued his early Mets tenure, pitched a scoreless ninth, his fourth straight scoreless appearance.
Luis Torrens led off the ninth with a single on the first pitch he saw from Jose A. Ferrer. He was lifted for pinch runner Jose Siri, who was bunted over to second by Mullins. Francisco Lindor was hit by a pitch to bring up Juan Soto, who blooped a single to center to tie the score at 3.
With Pete Alonso at the plate, Lindor and Soto executed a gutsy double steal. Alonso was intentionally walked, but Brandon Nimmo and Starling Marte struck out to end the threat.
It came back to haunt them. With a runner on first and one out in the 11th, Lile stroked Rogers’ 2-and-2 sinker off the base of the wall in left-center. It skipped away from Mullins, Josh Bell scored easily and Lile motored home as the throw sailed past Torrens.
Carlos Mendoza opted for Rogers despite Edwin Diaz’s seven-pitch 10th because the closer had pitched Thursday and warmed up Friday.
“It’s a tough one there,” Mendoza said of the Mullins play. “Once you realize you have no chance [to make the catch], maybe you give yourself a better chance at a play off the wall . . . Once it hits that part of the wall where it’s angled like that and it bounces toward the warning track toward rightfield, there’s not much he could do there.”
It was a dispiriting end to an afternoon that began in disaster, gave way to hope and finished in frustration.
In his fourth start in Flushing and seventh overall, Nolan McLean did something he’d never done: allow a run at Citi Field. After he walked James Wood to lead off the game and wild-pitched him to second, Bell singled and Wood scored on Lile’s forceout at second.
The Nationals scored again in the second, helped by the sort of poor defense that nearly sunk the Mets a night earlier. Lindor bobbled Dylan Crews’ grounder for a leadoff infield single and Riley Adams singled to right on a ball that skipped off Soto’s glove, with Crews scoring from first and Adams reaching third on the two-base error. It was Soto’s first error of the season.
Andrew Alvarez then hit a grounder to first, but Alonso’s throw to McLean took him off the bag for the error, putting runners at the corners with none out. McLean struck out the next two but then sailed a fastball well past an extended Alvarez. The ball then caromed back toward a sprawled-out McLean before getting fielded by Alonso, but not before Adams scored for a 3-0 Nationals lead.
“We’ve been inconsistent,” Mendoza said. “We go through stretches where we make plays, we play clean and then we go through stretches where that happens . . . Obviously, we know we have to be better, especially on some of the routine plays. It seems like and it feels like every time we make those errors, the team takes advantage.”
McLean allowed four hits and three runs (one earned) with two walks and six strikeouts in five innings. In seven major-league starts, he has a 1.27 ERA.
The rookie has struck out 46 batters, which is fourth most in franchise history in a pitcher’s first seven starts behind Dwight Gooden, Nolan Ryan and Matt Harvey.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
