NEWSLETTER
I wonder what this team could have been with a real closer. Probably won’t find out until the end of July. And that’s if we’re lucky.
Through his first four frames tonight, Ben Brown kept the Mets scoreless and hitless. And even though he had walked four batters, he needed just 61 pitches to get through that stretch of the game. But in the bottom of the fifth, the wheels came off a bit.
The first two batters reached on a single and a walk, and then even after securing the first two outs, Brandom Nimmo (RBI single), Starling Marte (RBI single) and DJ Stewart (walked) all reached consecutively, scoring two and chasing Brown from the game at 89 pitches. Bummer.
Fortunately, Christopher Morel’s 3-run homer an inning earlier, and a well-timed call to Keegan Thompson, temporarily limited the damage to just those two runs, preserving the Cubs lead. But it didn’t last long.
In the bottom-half of the sixth, after pushing their to 5-2, the Mets luck continued. After going error, strikeout, single, double, lineout, double, the Mets had tied the game at five off Keegan Thompson (and to a lesser extent, Richard Lovelady). And that score would hold until extra innings.
Both the Cubs and Mets escaped the 10th inning unscathed, despite a ghost runner on second base. But the Cubs plated one in 11th and the Mets just did a little better, scoring two including the game-winner. Daniel Palencia was the guy on the mound when the winning run came around to score. Though it’s hard to blame him a guy who was just in Triple-A, who just went 1-2-3 with a ghost runner in the 10th, and whose mistake was giving up a double to a talented hitter like Francisco Lindor.
