The Mets came into Sunday’s game looking to finish off their 10-game road trip on a high note.
After a drubbing on Saturday night, New York responded in a big way on Sunday, putting up 14 runs and 19 hits with contributions from every hitter No. 1 through No. 8.
“There have been a couple of players that have started slow, including myself, but that’s why we’re a team,” outfielder Yoenis Cespedes said through an interpreter. “There are some other ones who are playing really good and help us have the record we have so far.”
The Mets got on the board early, with Jay Bruce driving in a run in the first and Tomas Nido giving the Mets a 2-0 lead with his first RBI of the year in the second.
Adrian Gonzalez doubled the Mets lead with a double of his own in the third, plating Cespedes and Bruce.
Zack Wheeler, who labored through 30 pitches in the first, rebounded in the second but allowed a pair of runs in the third to cut the deficit in half.
The game would remain 4-2 until the seventh when Gonzalez broke it open with a three-run opposite field bomb, his third of the year.
Gonzalez, who has struggled early on this year, batting .227/.312/.394, raised his OPS to .706 on the year. While his traditional stats haven’t been ground breaking, the first basemen felt he has had some good at-bats and more modern stats suggest he’s due for a correction.
“Even a couple of my outs were hard hits,” Gonzalez said. “What matters to me is the guys in the front office are seeing the fact that I’m hitting the ball well. Really, at the end of the day, they’re the only ones that matter.”
The next inning is where the Mets teed off. Todd Frazier and Jose Reyes each hit home runs, while Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo notched RBIs of their own to give this team a 14-2 win to hang their hats on and come back home on a positive note.
Wheeler finished his day going five innings and fanning nine batters while allowing just the two runs. Part of his success was his introduction of a new changeup.
“I still don’t know what I call it,” Wheeler said. “Me and Dave [Eiland] have been working on a little split, split-fastball, split-change . . . It was working in the bullpen the other day, so I just carried it into the game.”
New York closed out their first full month of the season with a 17-9 record. While there were games they should have won, the Mets still sit atop the NL East with a 1.5 game lead over the Braves and Phillies.
“The life from our players and the way they’re playing the game, I couldn’t have asked for more this first month,” manager Mickey Callaway said.
While the Mets still have some kinks to work out, their first full month still turned out to be a solid one. Hopefully, this game gets the offense going and the team can really start to make some noise to kick off May.
