NEW YORK _ Mets manager Terry Collins has a simple rule of thumb at this time of this time of the season. You hit, you play.
So expect to see Kelly Johnson and Wilmer Flores' names in the lineup a lot as the Mets make their wild-card playoff push.
They were the heroes Wednesday night as the Mets beat the Miami Marlins, 5-2, for the third straight night and earned their ninth win in 11 games.
Johnson's three-run double snapped a 2-all tie in the eighth inning after Flores produced the other two runs with a second-inning home run.
Pitching wise, Bartolo Colon allowed two runs in seven innings, with a sixth-inning homer by Christian Yelich producing the only earned run, and Jeremy Familia earned his major league leading 44th save and set a franchise record for the most saves in a season with a perfect ninth inning.
Yoenis Cespedes started the eighth inning with a single. After Curtis Granderson walked, Cespedes tagged up when Flores flied out to deep center. Jay Bruce, much to the dismay of the crowd of 33,471, popped up for the second out, but the boos turned to cheers when Johnson hit A.J. Ramos' 3-2 pitch into the right-field corner.
The Marlins threw the Mets a curve when they put scheduled starter and former Yankee David Phelps (left oblique strain) on the disabled list and brought up Jake Esch from the minors to make his major league debut.
The Mets didn't know what to expect from Esch, who spent much of this season at Class AA Jacksonville, where he was 10-9 with a 4.03 earned run average before being promoted. At Class AAA New Orleans, he was 2-1 and 5.70 ERA in four starts.
"We're going in blind," Collins said.
So imagine what the conversation was in the Mets' dugout when Esch, not a notoriously hard thrower, struck out Asdrubal Cabrera and Cespedes to end the first inning.
After allowing an unearned run in the top of the second on throwing errors by Colon and Jose Reyes, Flores changed the dugout chatter in the bottom of the inning when he followed a walk to Curtis Granderson with his two-run homer to left field, several rows up and several seats to the right of the foul pole. Flores' 15th round-tripper extended his hitting streak to a career-best nine games.
Miami manager Don Mattingly lifted Esch (two runs, seven hits in 41/3 innings) after a one-out single by Cespedes in the fifth. Reliever Mike Dunn needed an inning-saving catch by Ichiro Suzuki to keep the Marlins' deficit at 2-1 and buy time for Yelich's game-tying homer leading off the sixth.
Granderson was engaged in an eight-pitch duel with Dunn when he hit a long fly to center that appeared to have a chance to be his third homer in two games. The 42-year-old Ichiro had other ideas, timing his jump perfectly and snatching the ball as it was ready to clear the fence.
As much as Mets fans like to see the colorful Colon bat, the veteran pitcher didn't do himself any favors by grounding into a pair of double plays. In the second, after Bruce and Travis d'Arnaud singled following Flores' homer, the slow-footed Colon hit into an inning-ending 3-6-3.
In the fourth, Bruce, d'Arnaud and Johnson singled, but the Mets' makings of a big inning crumbled when Colon hit into another double play and Reyes grounded out. It also didn't help that Bruce stopped at third on Johnson's hit, even though third-base coach Tim Tuefel was waving him home.
