Subway Series: Mets' Francisco Lindor hits leadoff HR and grand slam, Juan Soto goes deep in rout of Yankees

Zac Thornton was coming off the worst start of his rookie season, a dud last Sunday against the Giants, one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball.

That did not portend the best of outcomes for Saturday afternoon’s assignment at Yankee Stadium, where the Mets lefthander was to face an offense that Yankees manager Aaron Boone had said he thought might be hitting its stride.

Instead, it was Thornton rediscovering his. He mostly handcuffed the Yankees for seven innings in leading the Mets, who homered three times off Gerrit Cole and six times overall, to a 12-2 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 46,864.

Francisco Lindor hit two home runs — one on Cole's third pitch and one off Bradley Hanner, a grand slam in a five-run eighth inning  that turned the game into the baseball version of garbage time.

Thornton (4-5, 3.44 ERA), who allowed four home runs and a season-worst six runs in five innings in the loss to the Giants, retired the first nine Yankees he faced en route to allowing two runs, five hits and a walk.

“Last week, just didn’t do a great job of getting those four-seamers or cutters in, so kind of hounded it this week in bullpens and whatnot and executed it in the game,” Thornton said.

Thornton said he did not enjoy “the feeling of defeat” stemming from the Giants outing, which provided additional motivation.

“It’s not a good feeling, so you do anything to not have that feeling,” he said.

Thornton, who interim manager Andy Green said “was on the attack from kind of the get-go,” received plenty of help from his offense. The Mets had 14 hits, including homers off Cole by Lindor, Luis Torrens and Carson Benge in the first three innings. Later in the game came blasts from Juan Soto, Lindor and Jared Young. The six homers produced 10 runs, and four of them were hit with two outs. The Mets had nine two-out RBIs.

“Great at-bats up and down the lineup,” said Green, whose club improved to 69-79 overall and 22-13 since the Aug. 3 trade deadline. “We just had a lot of good swings.”

The Yankees (85-63) entered the day with a magic number of two to clinch a playoff spot and could have accomplished that with a victory and a Toronto loss. Instead, they fell four games behind AL East-leading Tampa Bay with 14 to play.

“I thought Thornton did a really nice job with his fastball-slider-cutter combo and he was able to land his slider enough to have a secondary presence,” Boone said. “The strike-throwing was really good. I thought he had a good presence with his four-seam at the top of the zone . . . thought he threw the ball really well.”

That was not the case for Cole (8-9, 3.67), who allowed back-to-back-to-back homers to begin his previous start against the Padres last Sunday en route to giving up four solo homers in that 4-3 loss. The three homers he allowed on Saturday made it seven off him in a span of 9 1/3 innings. He gave up five runs and nine hits — tying a season high in each category — walked none and struck out four in 4 1/3 innings.

“I think his stuff’s in a good place,” Boone said. “The strike-throwing’s been so good and the command’s been so good really for him all year, for the most part. [It’s] just that next layer of command of getting it to his spots. He’ll be fine.”

Lindor has hit four homers in his last four games and seven in his last 12 games.

“Usually guys like [Cole] don’t make too many mistakes,” said Lindor, who has 20 home runs. with 15 of those coming in 51 games since the All-Star break. “When they do, you gotta try to make them pay.”

Torrens, whom the Mets acquired from the Yankees in 2024 for cash considerations, made Cole pay in the second with a two-run homer to leftfield that made it 3-0. Benge's blast in the third gave the Mets a 4-0 lead.

“I mean, we didn’t miss the ball,” said Soto, who doubled off Cole in the fifth and scored on a single by Benge that ended Cole's afternoon. “We picked our moments and we capitalized.”

Paul Goldschmidt led off the fourth with a double and scored on a one-out single by Cody Bellinger to make it 4-1. Bellinger hit a two-out homer in the sixth to bring the Yankees within 5-2, but that was all they could muster off Thornton. 

“It was great, fun to watch, especially after the last outing” Green said. “See somebody bounce back like that . . . I think we value resilience at an incredibly high level, and to see it show up in a stadium like this and in a game like that is fun.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.