PHOENIX — In a 6-5 win against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the New York Mets’ greatest strength Friday night was hustling just enough to bring the game to a brief but complete halt.
Starling Marte’s sprint down the first-base line in the 10th and deciding inning yielded a run when he beat the throw from third baseman Matt Davidson. Initially ruled out, Marte and his immediate safe signal were vindicated when the Mets challenged the ruling, causing everybody — players, coaches, fans — to freeze while the umpires took another look.
The call was overturned, turning Marte’s would-be inning-ending groundout into a go-ahead RBI single, scoring Jeff McNeil and salvaging the night after Edwin Diaz’s first blown save of the season.
Seth Lugo stranded the potential winning run on first base and picked up the save in the bottom of the 10th, a highlight in a game that featured Chasen Shreve, Trevor May and Diaz combining to blow a four-run lead in the late innings.
Marte’s close call actually was at least the third bang-bang play of the night that went in the Mets’ favor.
Brandon Nimmo, who went 2-for-4 with two runs scored, had a pair of such sequences — and both proved critical as the Mets improved to 11-4.
The first occasion came in the fourth inning, when Nimmo became the Mets’ first baserunner against righthander Zac Gallen. He chopped a ball against the shift into leftfield and sped to second base to make it a double. With a snazzy slide on the outside of the bag, he avoided the throw from leftfielder Cooper Hummel and tag from second baseman Ketel Marte. It was close enough that play paused, but no request for a review came.
Moments later, on Pete Alonso’s bloop single, Nimmo scored to tie the game.
It happened again in the sixth, this time to put the Mets ahead. He was already on first base — after slapping a single past a drawn-in Davidson, no defensive shift used — when Marte followed with a single to left.
The play unfolding in front of him, Nimmo saw Hummel take a step back at the last moment before fielding the ball, so he went for third. The would-be close call became less so when Davidson dropped the ball while trying to tag Nimmo. Marte, meanwhile, wound up advancing to second, giving the Mets two runners in scoring position with no outs. The pre-replay delay came anyway, until the D-backs gave the go-ahead to resume.
The Mets took the lead on Francisco Lindor’s sacrifice fly to center, plating Nimmo, and added another run when Alonso’s weak grounder to first brought in Marte.
Lefthander David Peterson allowed one run in 5 2/3 innings. He allowed three hits and a walk and struck out three. Pitching to contact — including hard contact, such as the three 104-mph-or-harder batted balls that turned into outs — Peterson was highly efficient, throwing only 65 pitches.
Peterson, the No. 7 starter pitching in place of an injured Taijuan Walker, has a 0.64 ERA in three games (14 innings).
Gallen stifled the Mets again, holding them to one run in five innings (after tossing four shutout frames last weekend at Citi Field). He struck out seven, walked one and allowed two hits. Both knocks came in the fourth, on that first Nimmo-driven rally.
James McCann crushed a 452-foot two-run home run in the seventh inning, his first long ball of the year (hours after manager Buck Showalter, citing a recent conversation with hitting coaches Eric Chavez and Jeremy Barnes, said McCann was “close” to breaking out).
That breathing room turned out to be very important when Mets relievers had problems. Shreve yielded a run in the seventh, and May allowed Christian Walker’s two-run shot in the eighth. Diaz was an out away from ending it in regulation when Daulton Varsho snuck a home run over the rightfield fence.
