Wilmer Flores: “Everyday We’re Thinking About Winning”

Wilmer Flores is no stranger to the walk-off home run.

It was nearly two years ago when Flores gave the Mets a dramatic win against the Washington Nationals, just days after shedding tears because he thought he was being traded.

On Saturday, his long ball capped off a 6-5 comeback victory that extended the Mets winning streak to four games.

“As a hitter, you don’t want to try and do too much, but at the same time you want to do something, so you have to try and control that,” Flores said. “We didn’t give up. Every inning we were battling.”

After a rough outing from starter Zack Wheeler, who allowed five runs on seven hits while walking four and striking out six over five innings, the Mets put up four runs in the sixth, tied the game in the eighth and sent the fans home happy in the ninth.

While Wheeler put the Mets in a hole early on, the relief corps picked up the slack as Josh Smoker, Josh Edgin and Hansel Robles combined for four scoreless innings out of the ‘pen. The latter registered his sixth win of the year and second in as many days.

“We’re not thinking about [selling], we’re thinking about how to win,” Flores said.” We’re not thinking about [how] we’re some games out, or we’re not playing good. every time we’re out there we’re thinking about winning.”

The Mets were firing off all cylinders.

Jay Bruce launched his 25th home run of the year, a two-run shot to central to start the scoring off for the Mets.

The white hot Jose Reyes showed flashes of old registering two triples, Michael Conforto doubled home a run and Lucas Duda came through in the clutch to knot up the game in the late goings.

For a team that hasn’t been able to string together any lasting success this year, the last several days the team has seen results as it climbs back towards the .500 mark.

“There’s two months left,” Asdrubal Cabrera said. “Nothing’s done yet. We got to keep playing good baseball, and then we’ll see where we are.”

The Mets were just two games over .500 at this point in the 2015 campaign, only a few games better than where the 2017 team stands.

While it will take a substantial amount of wins to leapfrog the teams ahead of the Mets in the standings, the team hasn’t lost hope.

“We know there’s still a lot of baseball left,” Reyes said. “We know it’s not going to be easy, but we believe.”