NEW YORK -- The Mets don’t win easily, pretty much ever.
They win ugly games, yes. They win dramatic games and games with razor-thin margins, and they certainly win lengthy ones. Friday marked their 11th extra-inning affair of the season, which not only leads the Majors, but is two more than any other team. When MJ Melendez finally ended things with a walk-off two-run homer against Pete Fairbanks at Citi Field, the Mets found themselves in rather miraculous possession of a 9-7 win over the Marlins.
They’ll take it.
“Right now, at the big league level, you take the wins however they come,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Especially with how hard it’s been for us.”
Friday’s victory unfolded something like this: After taking four-run leads in the first, third and fourth innings, the Mets gave everything back under inauspicious circumstances. Starting pitcher Freddy Peralta, who has been unable to complete six innings in eight of his 12 starts this season, lasted just 4 2/3 this time around. That forced Mendoza to turn to a carousel of relievers for the second consecutive game -- only this time, things didn’t go quite so smoothly, as Tobias Myers served up a game-tying two-run homer to Owen Caissie in the eighth.
That brought the Mets and Marlins into extras. In the top of the 10th, Austin Warren pitched a scoreless inning in place of closer Devin Williams, who was unavailable after throwing 34 pitches two days prior. Then in the bottom half, Melendez fell into an 0-2 hole before seeing a 98.4 mph fastball he could handle, parking it over the fence in right for his first career walk-off.
“When I got in the box, I knew I had to put the ball in play,” Melendez said. “Give yourself a chance.”
For Melendez, the two-run homer erased a difficult 2-for-35 stretch that had seen his playing time suffer. Before the game, his father had encouraged him to re-read the bible verse Galatians 6:9: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” The message was apparent: Don’t give up, and good things can happen.
It may as well be a rallying cry for this entire Mets team, which has taken lump after lump throughout a difficult first two months of the season. Even after two consecutive wins, the Mets are still nine games under .500, alone in last place in the NL East. But they’ve at least shown an aptitude for winning when the degree of difficulty ratchets ever higher.
Dating back to mid-May, the Mets’ last five victories have included three extra-inning contests, two one-run games and a pair of two-run affairs, with the only bloated margin coming when they scored 10 runs in the 12th inning of a May 18 win over the Nationals. In those five victories, the Mets used an average of 5.6 pitchers per night.
“Is that sustainable? Of course not,” Mendoza said. “But at this level, man, whatever it takes day in and day out. We worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. And I’m glad that the boys came through today.”
Luke Weaver, the fifth man out of the bullpen on Friday, noted that these types of grind-’em-out games tend to come in bunches. There are some clear reasons for that. The Mets, who rank 25th in the Majors in runs, don’t score enough to put teams away with any sort of regularity. Their starting pitchers, like Peralta, tend not to pitch deep into the night. But their bullpen has been solid, resulting in late chances, and their pluckiness has been worth a mention, too.
The Mets are 7-4 in extra innings this season, tied with the Cardinals for the most wins in the Majors. Their five walk-offs are also tied with St. Louis for second-most.
“You just know during these stretches, you’ve got to stay focused,” Weaver said. “You’ve got to recover. You’ve got to give yourself an opportunity to be your best self. It does add up and take its toll. If you run five miles every day, you kind of get used to it. But you’re still tired.”
While this sort of winning formula may not seem sustainable, as Mendoza said, the Mets will take what they can get.
Maybe someday soon, they’ll even win an easy one.
“If it happens,” Weaver said with a chuckle, “no one’s complaining.”