NEW YORK — Considering the disparate directions the Giants’ and Mets’ seasons have taken so far, it should have come as no surprise.
And before the ball had even found a landing spot, eventually settling on the batter’s eye in center field, the air had been sucked out of the 30,116 spectators at Citi Field, who braved poor air quality from Canadian wildfires to see something that’s become a regular occurrence this season.
The Giants’ lineup woke up late to erase an early deficit.
The Mets’ bullpen blew a late lead.
And the big hit came from none other than rookie catcher Patrick Bailey, who hammered a hanging breaking ball from David Robertson 432 feet to center field for a three-run homer that completed San Francisco’s comeback in a 5-4 win in the opening game of its weekend series in New York.
Bailey has delivered consistently since being called up on May 19, and frequently in clutch spots. But never on a stage bigger than the Big Apple. He just missed the literal big apple in center field, his three-run shot landing a few feet to the left.
Robertson and his Mets teammates left the field to a chorus of boos.
The win snapped a brief two-game skid after dropping their final two games in Toronto and seemed to awaken the Giants’ offense from a long Canadian slumber. Before Bailey’s homer, the Giants had scored only four runs on 16 hits in their past 25 innings. Since reeling off 10 straight wins, the Giants had lost five of their eight games since entering Friday and four of their past five, failing to score more than three runs in any of them.
But Bailey accounted for that total in one swing and proved their magic was still alive.
The 24-year-old backstop came to bat in the top of the eighth after Joc Pederson reached on an error by first baseman Pete Alonso, who made a diving stop but flubbed the throw, and a free pass to J.D. Davis, who worked a walk after falling into a 2-2 count, laying off two pitches just below the strike zone.
Collecting his fifth homer and 26th RBI of the season, Bailey is the first Giants rookie to reach those total in his first 33 games since Willie McCovey, joining a group of five players in franchise history that also includes Orlando Cepeda and Willie Mays. It doesn’t include any catchers, especially any with the defensive abilities of Bailey.
After the Mets put the tying run on base against Camilo Doval in the ninth, Bailey fired a perfect throw to second base to catch Starling Marte, snapping a streak of 35 straight successful stolen base attempts by the Mets. He has thrown out 11 of 28 attempted base stealers since being called up, a 39% success rate that nearly doubles the league average.
Alex Cobb pitched well in his first start since June 13 (oblique strain) but departed after five innings and 79 pitches, trailing 3-2.
The Mets took the lead in the fifth, when a double down the left-field line from Jeff McNeil was interfered with by a young fan in Giants jersey. Brandon Nimmo, who started on first base after a one-out single, was awarded home. Manager Gabe Kapler challenged the placement of the runners unsuccessfully.
Resurfacing a side character from last season, Tommy Pham scored two of the Mets’ four runs and did more than slap a two-strike sweeper from Taylor Rogers in the sixth inning. He hammered it 411 feet, at 105.4 mph off the bat, reaching the facade of the second deck in left field as it hooked around the foul pole. The homer, Rogers’ first earned run allowed since May 19 (13 consecutive scoreless outings), gave the Mets a 4-2 lead but proved not to be enough insurance.
Wilmer Flores, one of three Giants back in their former ballpark, generated a mixed reaction from the crowd with a solo shot in the fifth inning. Clearly still holding a place in the hearts of Mets fans, Flores tied the score at 2 with a line-drive home run to left-center that didn’t generate nearly the typical vitriol from the New York crowd that an opponent’s success normally would. It was Flores’ second homer at Citi Field since leaving in free agency in 2018.
