“I ain’t even about to lie to you, every time [Bader] gets me going,” Buxton said. “He does something crazy like that, and I’m just sitting there looking at him. I had [Eddie Rosario] and I had [Max Kepler], but he’s a little different. … Balls I’m like, OK, he may have a chance, he catches them standing up. The balls that I’m like he’s got zero chance, he catches them sliding.”
The Twins built their three-run lead straddling the line between aggressiveness and recklessness on the basepaths. Castro opened the fifth inning with a hustle double, sliding headfirst into second base after lining a ball to center field that was fielded after two bounces.
Two batters later, Bader hit an RBI single through the left side of the infield. As soon as Bader saw the ball shoot through, he did a “hang loose” gesture toward his teammates in the dugout. Buxton followed with an RBI single to center, sprinting to second base when a throw went toward a cutoff man at the pitcher’s mound instead of directly to the base. When Buxton stood up after his headfirst slide, he yelled and waved his arms for the announced crowd of 19,721 to grow louder.
“You can’t be a one-dimensional lineup,” Bader said.
With two outs in the sixth inning, Castro drove in a run with a ground ball to first base. It was a missed call by first base umpire Hunter Wendelstedt — Mets reliever José Buttó clearly touched first base before Castro after receiving a flip from the first baseman — but the Mets burned their challenge earlier. Ryan Jeffers never stopped running and scored from second.
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