NEW YORK _ For a while, it looked like Jeurys Familia would be the villain. Instead, it was Pete Alonso who was a hero.
Alonso's 10th inning walk-off sac fly put a dramatic ending to the Mets 4-3 win over Cincinnati on Tuesday.
The Mets overcame a blown save by Familia and salvaged a promising start from Jason Vargas. Familia allowed two runs in the ninth with closer Edwin Diaz unavailable.
Vargas has earned his share of his critics among the Mets' fan base, but wasn't to blame in this game. He rewarded the organization once again for showing faith in him as the fifth starter. He shut down the Reds in his longest and most effective start of the season. The left-hander scattered three hits and one run over 5 1/3 innings and bolstered his case to stay in the rotation.
In his last three starts, Vargas has only allowed three earned runs over 14 innings. This latest appearance lowered his season ERA from 7.20 to a manageable 5.75.
Todd Frazier hit a go-ahead home run in the seventh and Michael Conforto added a key RBI in the eighth as the Mets improved to 15-14.
Familia threw a scoreless eighth, but could not finish a six-out save.
"You can't predict when it's going to happen, but you can keep on working," manager Mickey Callaway said of his team's pitching slump.
"That's what these guys are doing. It happens and it's not fun when it happens. It's tough, it hurts the team, it hurts the players. They want to go out and perform to the best of their abilities."
The Mets got on the board on a hustle play by Jeff McNeil in the third inning. With Joey Votto playing deep at first, McNeil dragged a bunt down the line and dove head-first to beat Reds starter Luis Castillo to the bag. Juan Lagares scored on the play, which extended McNeil's on-base streak to eight games.
Throughout his sophomore year, McNeil has proven to be one of the Mets' best contact hitters with an ability to get on in a variety of ways.
"He's just a really, really good hitter," Callaway said. "I'm sure a lot of the pitches that he hits for base hits, the pitcher goes back and says what else can I do? I threw that three inches off the plate."
For most of the night, Castillo held the Mets offense at bay. The Reds starter struck out seven and allowed two runs over 6 2/3 innings and worked his way out of trouble with the double play ball. As he cruised through the Mets lineup, there were pockets of fans along the third base line waving the Dominican Republic flag.
The Mets put together a sixth-inning rally with Robert Gsellman and Brandon Nimmo walks, but Conforto struck out swinging for the third out. The Mets came into the game having stranded more runners than any other team, perhaps both a blessing and a curse.
"It does mean that we're getting a lot of guys on and we still have scored a lot of runs to this point," Callaway said. "But it goes to show you that we're capable of scoring more runs than we have and we're definitely capable of stranding more runners than we have. I look at both of those numbers as optimism."
The performance by Vargas came at a perfect time for a team in need of better pitching, for a Mets rotation that entered the night with the league's 23rd-best ERA. The uncharacteristic play by Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard are part of the problem, but all five starters shoulder some of the blame. The fact that the Mets have hovered around .500 under those circumstances is a testament to how far the offense has come.
"They want to go out and perform to the best of their abilities," Callaway said. "But they got to keep on trucking and keep on working and that's what they're doing. They'll snap out of it and all will be well. We've got to try to pick each other up until then."
