WASHINGTON -- Had the Mets not stormed back in improbable fashion to win Sunday’s Subway Series finale against the Yankees, Bo Bichette’s face almost certainly would have been plastered across the back pages of every New York City tabloid. It was not just Bichette’s dropped popup that was at issue.
His overall performance, also, was growing far too concerning to ignore.
Through his first 46 games with the Mets, Bichette accumulated -0.7 Wins Above Replacement, according to Baseball Reference calculations. By that measure, entering Monday’s play, only five Major League players had been worse.
That was what made Bichette’s solo homer in a 16-7, 12-inning win over the Nationals on Monday so important. Beyond providing a crucial run in a game that the Mets won with a 10-run rally in the 12th, it offered evidence that Bichette, with more than 70 percent of this season left to play, can still find a way to be a productive member of the Mets. He also capped the 10-run frame with a two-run double.
New York was leading by a run when Bichette came to the plate with the bases empty in the seventh. Nationals lefty Mitchell Parker hung a curveball well north of the strike zone, but Bichette -- as is his nature -- swung anyway, blasting it a Statcast-projected 409 feet over the left-field fence. He took a few slow steps out of the batter’s box before breaking into a trot, savoring every bit of his first extra-base hit in 82 plate appearances.
Bichette wound up reaching base four times and collected three RBIs, while Brett Baty hit the Mets’ longest home run of the season to date (451 feet) and Carson Benge notched his third go-ahead, extra-inning RBI in the last week. The previous two were walk-offs back home at Citi Field. This one was a run-scoring single that deflected off pitcher Paxton Schultz to key the 10-run 12th.