NEW YORK — The Mets are living and dying with Pete Alonso’s power.
They have won 10 of the 11 games that Alonso has homered in this season, and Friday night’s 8-6 win over the Phillies fell into the majority.
Alonso cranked his 12th homer of the year in the third inning off Bailey Falter, a two-run 400-foot shot to left field that gave the Mets a nice, breathable five-run advantage over their division rivals. The Mets kept adding on, and they needed most insurance runs, but it was the team polar bear that brought the party back to Citi Field to kick off the Mets' six-game homestand.
The Mets (30-17) had been flirting with their 30th win of the season since Tuesday, during their wild back-and-forth, three hour, 50 minute game against the Giants that went the other way. Had they won that night, the Mets would’ve become the second team in MLB to eclipse that mark, following only the Yankees who won their 30th game earlier on Tuesday. The Mets were the first team to reach 20 wins earlier this month.
Alonso’s home run in the third was also his 400th career hit, which means 29.5% of the first baseman’s hits since his 2019 rookie season have been dingers. Alonso also now leads MLB with 44 RBIs.
Meanwhile, the Mets lived to deal with their growing bullpen problem another day.
Carlos Carraso pitched better than his final line suggested, because Mets manager Buck Showalter yanked him with runners on first and second in the sixth inning and reliever Chasen Shreve provided none of it when he promptly surrendered a three-run home run to Phillies catcher Garrett Stubbs.
All five runs that were charged to Carrasco came in the sixth inning, but none of the four singles he allowed were hit harder than 84 mph off the bat. So four softly-hit base hits, including two that never left the infield, and a walk to Odubel Herrera resulted in five earned runs on six hits across 5 2/3 innings and 85 pitches. Carrasco, whose ERA jumped to 3.98 following his ninth start of the year, had retired 15 of his first 18 batters, including seven strikeouts, before his outing went sideways in the sixth.
Shreve, on the other hand, has struggled in five of his last six relief appearances. The lefty specialist had been terrific for the Mets to begin the season, carrying a 0.74 ERA into his 11th relief appearance just a couple of weeks ago. But he has since allowed at least one earned run in each of his last half-dozen outings. The Mets have just one other left-handed bullpen arm in Joely Rodriguez, and both he and Shreve have been used plenty by Showalter through the team’s first 47 games.
Without Trevor May, who is on the injured list with a triceps stress reaction for at least the next couple of weeks, the Mets bullpen has been forced to pick up the slack with varying degrees of success. Going into the 2022 season, the Mets' relief corps was their weakest area on paper, and more than a quarter into the year, it remains that way.
But, for now, Mets relievers have recorded a 3.65 ERA overall, which ranks in the middle of the league at 15th. We’ve seen bullpen arms be impressive, while also costing some games. The league-average effort means GM Billy Eppler should be scouring the market yesterday for any acquisitions, but it’s also an area the Mets can potentially afford to wait to improve, in a bigger way, at the trade deadline.
