“I’m not sure I can win this, but it’s the right thing to lose.”
—Abraham Zwerdling in “The Containment” by Michelle Adams
WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — And now, however briefly, the Mets can breathe.
They won consecutive games over the weekend. They claimed a series for the first time this month. They even looked like a good baseball team doing it, thanks to improved starting pitching and an offense coming out of a months-long shell.
Let’s break down two important developments from Sunday’s 7-3 win over the Seattle Mariners.
The offense continues to click
If you’d known at the start of the week that the Mets would…
score eight runs off Spencer Strider on Tuesday
score six runs in two innings off Carlos Carrasco on Wednesday
go 12-for-24 off George Kirby on Sunday
…you’d probably hope for more than a 3-3 week.
Indeed, New York’s offense was largely free of blame for some of the recent losses. Going back to Aug. 10, the Mets have scored 47 runs in seven games, with contributions up and down the lineup.
On Sunday, Franciscos Lindor and Alvarez led the way. Lindor had three more hits, giving him multiple hits in five straight games (and 13 total in that span). Alvarez had three knocks, including an RBI double to open the scoring. His OPS is up to .787; it was .702 last week and .621 the day before he was sent to the minors in June.
(Alvarez’s hot streak made his departure in the seventh inning with a right hand injury especially concerning. He injured it while sliding headfirst to beat out a double. He has missed time in each of the past two seasons with hand issues, though both times on his left hand.)
Mark Vientos provided the game’s critical blow: a two-out, three-run, opposite-field home run in the fifth inning off Kirby. That created a 6-1 lead, providing some breathing room for a pitching staff that needs every insurance run it can get. The Mets got nine hits from the bottom five in the order.
“Overall, we got him up,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of the approach against Kirby. “We were aggressive with his fastball, and we executed.”
Clay Holmes was good enough
As Holmes’ innings climbed and his results have faded dramatically over the last seven starts, the Mets remained steadfast that his underlying stuff was fine — better, even, than it had been earlier in the season. The issues for Holmes were of continued refinement with his pitch mix and of command — not of fatigue.
In that regard, Sunday marked a step forward. Holmes allowed a run on five hits in five innings, walking only one. There were some anxious moments, of course, especially when he went 3-0 on ninth hitter Cole Young with the bases loaded in the fourth. But he rebounded to induce a pop-up, and he retired the top of the Seattle lineup in order in his final frame.
“He was really good in the strike zone,” Mendoza said. “He stayed on the attack.”
Holmes achieved his end results by pitching backward. Whereas he’d emphasized his sinker in recent outings, on Sunday he was heavy with his breaking pitches to keep Seattle off balance.
Holmes had thrown his sinker more than 60 percent of the time in each of his past two starts; when he walked five last outing against Atlanta, Carlos Mendoza and Jeremy Hefner suggested Holmes stuck too long with a sinker he couldn’t command as well as usual. So on Sunday, Holmes cut the sinker usage to one-third of the time, with his sweeper and slider filling the void. The Mariners are in the bottom five in baseball against sliders, and they went 1-for-8 off the sweeper and slider to finish at-bats on Sunday.
Holmes talked about pitching more freely, “instead of forcing my best stuff.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to trust your stuff and get a good mix going,” he said.
While imperfect, it was exactly the kind of serviceable outing Holmes delivered time after time early in the season. That’s what the Mets need from him moving forward.
The exposition
The Mets took two of three from the Mariners — their first series win since the sweep in San Francisco in late July. At 66-58, New York maintained a 1 1/2-game lead over Cincinnati for the final wild card spot in the National League.
Washington split four games with Philadelphia. The Nationals are 50-74.
Atlanta finished a sweep of Cleveland and has now won eight of its last nine games. It remains too little too late, with the club still just 56-68. The White Sox visit Truist Park for three starting Monday.
The pitching possibles
at Washington
LHP David Peterson (7-5, 3.30 ERA) v. RHP Jake Irvin (8-7, 5.14 ERA)
RHP Kodai Senga (7-4, 2.35) v. RHP Brad Lord (3-6, 3.26)
LHP Sean Manaea (1-1, 4.78) v. LHP MacKenzie Gore (5-12, 4.04)
at Atlanta
RHP Nolan McLean (1-0, 0.00) v. LHP Joey Wentz (4-3, 4.72)
RHP Clay Holmes (10-6, 3.64) v. RHP Erick Fedde (4-12, 5.52)
LHP David Peterson v. RHP Spencer Strider (5-10, 4.69)
Injury updates
Mets’ injured list
Player
Injury
Elig.
ETA
Right elbow sprain
Now
September
Lower back inflammation
Sept. 9
September
Fractured left tibia
Now
September
Left lat strain
Now
2026
Tommy John surgery
Now
2026
Elbow surgery
Now
2026
Ruptured left Achilles tendon
Aug. 26
2026
Tommy John surgery
Now
2026
Tommy John surgery
Now
2026
Left shoulder fracture
Now
2026
Tommy John surgery
Sept. 1
2027
Red = 60-day IL
Orange = 15-day IL
Blue = 10-day IL
While the rest of the team traveled to Washington on Sunday night, Alvarez was slated to return to New York for an MRI Monday on his right thumb. “(It’s) concerning,” Carlos Mendoza said. “I’m not going to lie.”
Tylor Megill’s rehab start Sunday went well: He struck out nine of the 12 batters he faced, giving up a single hit in 3 1/3 innings.
Minor-league schedule
Triple-A: Syracuse v. Indianapolis (Pittsburgh)
Double-A: Binghamton at Portland (Boston)
High-A: Brooklyn at Abedeen (Baltimore)
Low-A: St. Lucie at Palm Beach (St. Louis)
Last week in MetsA note on the epigraph
A history of the case that nearly desegregated schools in metropolitan Detroit, “The Containment” caught my eye when a reviewer compared it to J. Anthony Lukas’ outstanding “Common Ground,” one of my favorite works of non-fiction. The books approach the same topic — school desegregation and the opposition to busing in the 1970s — in different ways. Whereas “Common Ground” explored the issue through various characters on the ground in Boston, “The Containment” is a more thorough examination of the legal arguments. If you read one, I still prefer “Common Ground,” but I liked “The Containment” more than I initially expected I would.
Trivia time
Dick Rusteck’s shutout in his major-league debut in 1966 is the best debut start for a Met according to GameScore. Which Mets pitcher, who debuted in 2012, ranks second on that list?
(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)
(Photo: Kyle Ross / Imagn Images)