The New York Mets (56-66) began a seven-game road trip on Thursday in Busch Stadium against the St. Louis Cardinals (54-68). After not getting a lot of length from their starters during the Pirates series, José Quintana (1-4, 3.03 ERA) was able to provide the Mets with a quality start. Thanks to another home run by Pete Alonso, New York was able to take the series opener by a final score of 4-2.

After both teams were scoreless for the first three innings, New York was able to crack Adam Wainwright in the top of the fourth. After a Jeff McNeil one-out double, Alonso continued his home run stretch with a two-run shot to center, his 37th of the year.

For Alonso, he has homered in back-to-back games, the second time that he has done that in August (7 home runs total). The seven home runs are tied with Matt Olson for the most home runs in the National League in August.

The Mets got a key insurance run in the following inning. After back-to-back walks by Rafael Ortega and Brandon Nimmo (2-for-4), Francisco Lindor extended the lead to three with an RBI double (3 RBIs in the last 2 games).

Even though the Mets finally got some offense going against Wainwright, they weren’t able to necessarily break the game open. The veteran right-hander went six innings, allowed three runs on four hits, walked three, and struck out two on 93 pitches (54 strikes) in the loss.

Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

Those were all the runs that Quintana would need as he was able to induce a good amount of ground balls from the Cardinals’ offense (6 total). The left-hander had only allowed one hit through the first six innings (Paul Goldschmidt single in the fourth). Then, St. Louis was able to get to him in the seventh.

Tyler O’Neill began the inning with a solo home run, his seventh of the year as he made up for his baserunning blunder in the fourth. Jordan Walker followed that up with a walk and Andrew Knizner singled, which ended up chasing Quintana from the game.

Drew Smith would come in and even though he allowed a sacrifice fly to Alec Burleson that cut the lead to one, that’s all St. Louis would get.

As for Quintana, he threw the ball well against his former team. He went six innings, allowed two runs on three hits, walked four, and struck out five on 97 pitches (57 strikes) in the win.

After a scoreless eighth inning from Grant Hartwig, the Mets got the lead back to two runs when Tim Locastro hit his first home run of the year to dead center field. It was his first home run since July 2022 when he was with the New York Yankees.

The Mets turned to Trevor Gott to try to get his first save of the year and his first since August 8, 2020. Even though Gott allowed a pair of singles, he got Goldschmidt to strike out looking to finish off the game.

Player Of The Game

The player of the game has to be Quintana. With his outing on Thursday, he has now gone six innings in five consecutive starts and has allowed three runs or fewer in all six outings he has made in a Met uniform. According to Baseball Savant, he got 11 swings and misses and he had a good amount of variety with his slider, curveball, four-seam fastball, and changeup.

On Deck

The Mets and Cardinals will resume their series on Friday night. You can catch the game on SNY at 8:15 p.m. ET. LHP Joey Lucchesi (1-0, 4.43 ERA) will get the ball for New York against LHP Zack Thompson (2-4, 3.96 ERA) for the Cardinals.