Zac Thornton tossed six solid innings, Juan Soto homered among his three hits and the host New York Mets beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-3 in the second game of a four-game series on Friday.<\/p>\n
The Phillies and Chicago Cubs both lost on Friday, dropping them into a three-way tie with the San Diego Padres for the three National League wild-card spots. All three teams are 85-69. The Arizona Diamondbacks (80-74) are the nearest pursuer, five games back.<\/p>\n
Carson Benge laced an RBI single in the first inning to give the Mets (70-84) a lead they never relinquished.<\/p>\n
Fellow rookie outfielder A.J. Ewing added a two-run single two batters later, and Soto delivered a three-run homer in the sixth as New York snapped a five-game losing streak — its longest since a seven-game slide from June 20-26.<\/p>\n
Soto went 3-for-5 and Benge and Francisco Lindor finished with two hits for the Mets, who received one hit apiece from their other six starters.<\/p>\n
Thornton (5-5) gave up two runs on five hits and one walk while striking out four. He is 5-4 with a 3.26 ERA in 12 starts since his most recent promotion from Triple-A Syracuse.<\/p>\n
Bryson Stott delivered a run-scoring double in the second for the Phillies before Edmundo Sosa and Derek Hill hit solo homers in the sixth and seventh, respectively.<\/p>\n
Sosa finished 3-for-3 as Philadelphia fell to 7-9 this month.<\/p>\n
Nate Lavender surrendered Hill’s homer in 1 2\/3 innings before Dedniel Nunez recorded his first save by tossing 1 1\/3 perfect innings.<\/p>\n
Tim Mayza (3-4), serving in an opener role, took the loss for the Phillies after allowing three runs on three hits and one walk in one-third of an inning. Mayza tossed 32 pitches and had back-to-back 10-pitch battles with Soto and Bo Bichette, the second and third batters he faced.<\/p>\n
Jose Urquidy relieved Mayza and allowed five hits over 4 2\/3 scoreless innings. Urquidy, who was claimed off waivers from the Chicago White Sox on Thursday, walked none while striking out six.<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Field Level Media. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published September 18, 2026 at 7:14 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zac Thornton tossed six solid innings, Juan Soto homered among his three hits and the host New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-853113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}