Behind terrific pitching and a barrage of long balls, the Mets clobbered the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. Logan Verrett pitched six beautiful, scoreless innings, artfully mixing sliders and changeups to keep hitters off balance and off base. Had the game not been a blowout, Verrett easily could have gone another inning, if not two. Jim Henderson, Rafael Montero and Hansel Robles finished out the game, allowing a run in three innings of relief work. Juan Lagares‘s spectacular 3-run homer robbing, over-the-wall catch prevented the Phillies from making a game of it in the bottom of the 8th inning.
But the real story in this game was the power ball jackpot, as Gary Cohen pegged it. Six home runs accounted for all 11 runs. Michael Conforto kicked off the long ball brigade with a first inning 2-run homer off the previously unhittable rookie Vince Velasquez. In the third inning, Yoenis Cespedes capitalized on Ryan Howard‘s costly error that extended the inning by clobbering a 3-run homer. Neil Walker added two homers from the right side of the plate, a rarity for him prior to this season (hat tip to hitting coach Kevin Long). Lucas Duda hit his second bomb in as many nights and even the struggling Curtis Granderson managed to launch one over the wall of the Phillies band box.
Tomorrow night the 7-6 Mets go for the road sweep with Bartolo Colon taking on Jeremy Hellickson.
That’s 33 runs scored with 17 HR(!!) so far on this five-game road trip. Offense is fun.
That was like batting practice. Even Verrett hit a double! Tomorrow we get to see Colon at the plate.
Watching Verrett out there reminds me of the days of the guy Steve Zabriskie used to call “the amazing Terry Leach.” That is, a huge contribution from a totally unexpected source.
DED, that’s an excellent point. One thing almost every championship team in every major sport has in common is the unexpected hero. The ’86 Mets didn’t just win 108 games and the WS because of Gooden, Darling, Straw, Keith and Gary. They got career years out of Knight, Ojeda and Backman and uncovered a few new young stars in Dykstra and Mitchell.
I think the 162 game schedule makes the unexpected source especially relevant.
In their last 8 games in Philly, the Mets have hit 27 homeruns.
Every time the Mets tried to play small ball they screwed it up by hitting a homerun!