Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

It was worth the wait. Having been mired in an almighty rut offensively, the New York Mets finally broke out at the plate and it culminated in a big, big night against the Marlins in Miami on Saturday. It was the perfect response to what had been a tough week for the offense up until that point.

After suffering a 6-3 loss to the Marlins in the opening game of the series that put them 3-4 in their last seven games, the Mets woke up on Saturday having released their hold on the N.L. East division lead. With the Atlanta Braves in first place for the first time all year and with 23 regular season games remaining, something had to give. And it did. In a big, big way.

Francisco Lindor spoke on Friday about players needing to find a way to break through a wall they had collectively hit together during the most important stretch of the year. Lindor, Pete Alonso and Daniel Vogelbach were all mired in pretty significant slumps at the plate and that sudden absence of power really hurt the Mets against teams they should be beating up on. The team even called up highly-regarded prospect Mark Vientos prior to the game in order to add a much-needed spark to their offense.

“I think it’s just baseball, it is that time of year. A lot of us have kind of hit the wall,” Lindor said after the game on Friday. “We’ve got to find ways to break through the wall and do it together. That’s what good teams do and I’m sure we’re going to do it.”

Give full credit to Lindor because he very much practiced what he preached by leading the way on Saturday with an offensive outburst. And, just as he predicted, the Mets broke through the wall together. Heck, they didn’t just break through it, they absolutely smashed through it with no mercy shown whatsoever.

The Mets took full advantage of the opportunities presented to them by coming up with five hits with runners in scoring position, something they struggled to do in recent games. By piling on early and chasing Marlins’ starter Pablo López out of the game with eight earned runs on 10 hits, they gave their opponent no chance to even stage a fightback.

“I think we got some people out there and we cashed them in – that was the big difference,” manager Buck Showalter said. “We had some (on Friday night) and weren’t able to cash them in, but just a lot of good at-bats. A lot of not trying to do too much. There were a lot of good at-bats out there. They just kept putting good at-bats together.”

It all came down to an outstanding forth inning – the best inning of the season so far. Clearly frustrated by their collective recent struggles and a difficult first inning, the Mets put together 16 hits in the forth and absolutely shelled López. With the game tied thanks to a Jeff McNeil RBI single in the third, the offense absolutely exploded in the next inning, and it was Eduardo Escobar who set the tone.

Since coming off the injured list, Escobar has carried this team offensively through a rough stretch, slashing .476/.522/.762 (.1.284 OPS) with two home runs, three RBI and two walks over the past seven days alone. He continued to rake on Saturday by going 3-for-5 with a home run, a double and two RBI. He had already extended his hitting streak to eight-straight games with a second inning single, and he topped that in the forth with a double to score Mark Canha to give the Mets the lead.

“It is who Eduardo has been at times this year,” Showalter said after the game. “This is the guy he’s capable of being.”

It wasn’t just Escobar who led the charge. James McCann pitched in with an RBI single and then Mark Canha came up in the clutch in the biggest way possible by hitting a grand slam to blow the game wide open. There was no coming back for the Marlins at that point and not only was it a huge, huge hit in the overall context of the game, but it was also a meaningful one for Canha because it was the first grand slam of his career.

“That was my first career grand slam. My very first major league hit though was inches away from being a grand slam,” Canha said. “I was joking with Brandon Nimmo earlier that I haven’t even come close since, so I finally got my first one after seven years. You just want to have a good at-bat and at least get one or two in, but it just so happened that I threw it in that area and it kind of just reacted.”

Canha’s gritty at-bat where he was down in the count culminated in a stellar inning for the Mets. It was the first time all season that the Mets had scored eight runs in a single inning – they had only reached the eight-run mark in one of their last 16 games. That speaks to both how dominant the offense was on Saturday and how much they had struggled recently.

Nearly every batter contributed to a huge day at the plate, including Lindor who backed up his words from Friday by going 3-for-5 with a home run and two RBI. Lindor and the rest of his teammates were able to come up in the clutch with big hits at critical moments in the game, and they were consistent with their approach all night long. That was something that was arguably missing from games before, but Saturday provided the Mets with a perfect blueprint of how to put good at-bats together and string big hits together down the stretch.

“We’re in a spot now where we’re competing every day,” Canha said. “We’re in this fight with the Braves, everyone knows it. I’m not gonna shy away from it, and we just need to get big hits in big spots and I think we need to do that on a consistent basis. That’s what September baseball has to be about and what playoff baseball has to be about. We need to embrace it. It’s an opportunity, it’s a blessing to be in this spot that we’re in, and I look forward to battling until the end.”