It was the stuff of slow-pitch softball games, with so many liners filling the hot air over Citi Field that even a relief pitcher couldn’t help but get a piece of the action.
In Thursday’s showdown of the top two teams in the NL East, the Nationals and Mets combined for 16 runs on 27 hits, 13 for extra-bases. The outburst included eight homers, two into the batter’s eye centre and two into the upper deck in right.
There were 310 pitches thrown, and though none of them were underhanded tosses, it seemed that way. How else to explain Nationals reliever Ollie Perez, the scorned former Met, who had been hitless in six years, but nonetheless collected a pair of hits, including one that ignited a rally?
But once the dust settled on one of the weirdest nights in the history of Citi Field, the Mets emerged as 9-7 winners of the Nationals. With three games left before the All-Star break, the Mets have cut their deficit in the division to three games.
It ended in controversy, when umpires ruled that Jayson Werth slid into second base too late. It turned Daniel Murphy’s hard grounder - that shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera needed a lunge just to snag - into a critical double play that helped Jeurys Familia escape a jam.
The go-ahead homer came off the bat of the scorching Wilmer Flores, who blasted a three-run shot in the fifth inning to give the Mets their first lead of the game. Improbably, it stuck.
Flores didn’t even start the game. As expected, he was squeezed out of the lineup, the victim of a numbers crunch, with manager Terry Collins resolving to give playing time at third base to Jose Reyes.
“I wasn’t playing today,” Flores said. “I got the opportunity to go out there. And I was just ready for him. I faced him a couple of times. The first pitch I saw, I put a good swing on it.”
Nevertheless, Flores entered the game on a double switch, then blasted his fifth homer since Sunday, giving Collins another reason to reconsider.
Twice, the Mets fell behind the Nationals, only to tie it. In the fifth inning, the Nats went ahead 6-4, their third lead of the game. Only then did the Mets finally go ahead on Flores’ timely swing. The homer injected life into a vocal crowd on a sticky, humid night here. They cheered for a curtain call and until Flores finally obliged, ducking his head out of the Mets dugout.
Of course, it wasn’t the first time on a strange night that they had expressed their emotions.
For perceived crimes big and small, committed in the past and the present, they showered boos upon old friends (Murphy for knocking in three runs and Perez for, well, being Perez), old foils (Bryce Harper for blasting a mammoth homer) and old stars (Jose Reyes for getting picked off first base even though he had homered earlier).
Murphy had been cheered in his first trip back to Flushing following his defection via free agency to the Nationals -hastened of course by the Mets’ refusal to give him a long-term deal. But his onslaught against his former employees trumped whatever sentimental memories fans may have harbored from his magical postseason run.
Not that Murphy seemed to mind. He continued his one-man crusade for revenge. In 10 games against his former mates, Murphy has 14 RBIs, the latest on a seventh-inning solo shot off Antonio Bastardo.
By the end of the night, the clubs bashed eight homers, a single-game record at Citi Field.
The Nationals clubbed three in the fourth inning alone against Bartolo Colon, who endured his worst start of the season.
Clint Robinson and Anthony Rendon hit back-to-back solo shots after Harper’s towering blast. The Mets answered with a pair of solo blasts of their own in the fourth courtesy of Reyes and catcher Travis d’Arnaud. Asdrubal Cabrera smacked a solo shot in the sixth.
Curtis Granderson reached base in his first five plate appearances. He walked twice, singled twice and added a double. Indeed, it was a brutal night for the pitchers.
Steady throughout the entire first half, Colon hit a wall, allowing a season-high six runs in 41/3 innings. With the exception of his June 21 start, when he was knocked out of the game one batter in by a line drive off his hand, it was the 43-year-old righty’s shortest outing of the year. But Lucas Giolito, the highly regarded Nationals prospect, had it worse.