He did it again… Wilmer Flores, who had been hitting the ball on the screws all night without a base hit to show for it, wouldn’t be denied in the tenth inning as his game-winning walk off single would attest.
“I faced the guy before and I was looking for a breaking ball,” Flores said. “I got it up, he threw it, I was ready for it.”
For Flores, it was his second career walk-off RBI, the other came on September 8, 2014 vs. Colorado when he hit a sacrifice fly.
With a reputation for being an RBI Machine, as Wally Backman once told us during an interview in 2013, Flores rarely squanders a chance to drive in a run. In this latest streak, he has six RBI in his last three games.
Anthony DiComo of MLB.com aptly pointed out that if you throw out the first eight games of this season, in which Flores was 4-for-25, he is batting .270 with eight home runs and 21 RBIs in 123 plate appearances.
“Extrapolate those numbers over a full season, and it becomes clear that Flores has the potential to develop into one of the top offensive shortstops in baseball — if he is not one already.”
Wow… So as the Mets look to complete the sweep against the Phillies, one of the league’s worst teams, remember that the difference in those first two wins was all Wilmer Flores.
Back in March I wrote, “By the time the new season is over, Flores is going to have a lot of his detractors, especially those in the media, eating a ton of crow. I hope they’re hungry.”
The one person who has done a surprisingly complete 180 on Flores, after more than a year of begrudgingly playing him on the GM’s orders, is Terry Collins.
It was obvious to all that for the longest time the Mets manager wanted absolutely nothing to do with Flores, disparaging him every chance he got.
But these days, Collins has been his biggest supporter. And why shouldn’t he be? After all, with his job on the line, Flores has already saved his ass a half-dozen times this season and it’s only May.
Keep on keeping on Wilmer…
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