NEW YORK — On the very first play of the game, Pete Alonso’s flip to Marcus Stroman went awry. Covering first, Stroman dove to the ground in his attempt to corral the ball. Tommy Pham was safe at first and awarded a base hit. Stroman walked back to the mound visibly shaking the dirt off his bare hand.
His signature bravado came out in the next at-bat.
Stroman went to his darting split-finger and got two-hitter Trent Grisham to ground into a double play. As soon as the ball hit Alonso’s glove, Stroman was shouting and spinning his finger horizontally in a circular direction.
As his celebration demonstrated, he was rolling. So too were the Mets (32-24), who beat the Padres, 4-1, to the delight of another raucous Citi Field crowd.
Stroman’s rhythm continued for his entire outing. He cut, sank and slid the ball for 6 1/3 innings. The Padres (37-29) could do nothing more than beat it into the dirt. Ten of the 19 outs Stroman recorded came on the ground, helped along by two double plays. Apart from a second deck moonshot by Fernando Tatis to supply the only run for the brown and yellow, the Padres were punchless all afternoon. Stroman struck out eight San Diego swingers and only gave them one base on balls.
Before the game, Mets manager Luis Rojas waxed poetic about Stroman’s arsenal, saying his pitches have so much movement and depth that it’s sometimes hard to tell what he’s throwing from the dugout until seeing the radar gun. On Saturday afternoon, that entire arsenal was on display, doing exactly what Stroman and the Mets’ wide-ranging group of pitchers have done all season.
Unlike the pitchers, Francisco Lindor’s first two and a half months with the Mets have been defined by all the things he’s not doing.
The $341 million shortstop isn’t hitting for average (.213 prior to Saturday’s game), getting on base (.306) or slugging the ball (.332). While his slick glovework and bubbly personality traveled with him from Cleveland, his bats seemed to have been left behind.
On the first pitch he saw on Saturday, a lightning quick wave of his bat reminded the world why he’s one of the game’s very best talents.
Lindor crushed a 416-foot home run into the right center field seats. The Mets took a two-run lead on their superstar’s sixth homer of the season, and he’d come around to score in the sixth inning after drawing a leadoff walk, digging a hole that proved deep enough to bury the Padres.
The Mets’ stellar bullpen battened down the hatch, finishing things off with 2.2 hitless frames. Aaron Loup sat Jake Cronenworth and Victor Caratini down to close the seventh. Seth Lugo danced around his first walk of 2021 to escape the next inning, punctuated by a wicked slider that Manny Machado swung through. Edwin Diaz’s 12th save, cushioned by Jonathan Villar’s insurance homer in the bottom of the eighth, closed the book.
Another victory on Sunday would finalize the Mets’ fourth sweep of the season. If it goes anything like the first two games of this series, the team will be rolling into their four-game set against the Cubs with their spirits at a euphoric high.
