ST. LOUIS _ With Jacob deGrom taking the injured list instead of the Busch Stadium mound Friday night, it was up to the scuffling Jason Vargas to get the Mets and himself, for that matter, back on the winning track.
He did exactly that, giving the Mets four solid innings in a 5-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in the series-opening contest at Busch Stadium.
There were base-runners and Vargas gave up hard-hit fly balls but only one left the park _ a solo shot by Jose Martinez to lead off the fourth inning.
Vargas was removed after his at-bat in the fifth. With the Mets using a short bench for the second straight game, they had little choice but to use their pitcher to save a bat. Brandon Nimmo remains out with a stiff neck, though he says it's about "90 percent" healed. After an implosion that saw the soft-tossing lefty give up four earned on 1/3 of an inning in his last start in Atlanta, Vargas (2-0) bounced back by limiting the Cards to just the one home run on three hits, walking three and striking out three with 75 pitches.
Adam Wainwright (2-1) was chased from the game with two on and none out in the fourth. He was charged with four runs (three earned) in his sixth career loss to the Mets.
With the Mets up 5-1 in the sixth and Lugo trying to eat a few innings, Lane Thomas, who was called up from Class AAA on Wednesday, hit for the pitcher with one on and two out. In his first major league at-bat, Thomas took Lugo back to the wall in right and the ball bounced off of it for what was initially ruled as an RBI triple. After a review, it was ruled a two-run home run and the Mets' lead was cut to two runs.
The Mets nearly gave the game away in the eighth with a combination of bad defense and bad relief pitching by Jeurys Familia and Justin Wilson. J.D. Davis made a great stop at third but an awful throw to allow an unearned run. St. Louis had the tying run on third but Robert Gsellman retired Jed Gyorko and Matt Carpenter to get to Edwin Diaz in the ninth, who converted his seventh save.
But barely. Again, the Cardinals had the tying run at third but Diaz escaped.
Pete Alonso slugged his seventh homer of the season to lead off the sixth inning. His solo shot off Ryan Helsley, which gave the Mets a 5-1 lead, was the second-hardest hit ball of the night, coming off his bat at 111.7 mph. He later outdid himself by hitting the hardest ball of the night, a 116 mph single off former Yankee Tyler Webb.
Robinson Cano snapped out of his funk with a 3-for-5 performance. His RBI double in the first inning put the Mets on the board. In the second, it was an RBI single that scored Juan Lagares after Lagares reached third on an error by the shortstop and in the fourth, he dispatched Wainwright with a double that put Alonso on third, where he was able to score easily on a groundout by Wilson Ramos.
J.D. Davis went 2 for 4 with a walk to extend his hitting streak to five games.
