Mets 5, Rockies 3 – The Mets bust out the bats and the broom to sweep the Rockies

You expect good teams to beat up on bad teams, but we all know how baseball is random and sometimes that just doesn’t happen. Thankfully, the Mets did not suffer such a fate this weekend, sweeping the lowly Rockies, continuing Edwin Diaz’s save streak, and overtaking first place from the Phillies.

Clay Holmes started for the Mets and, aside from a few fly balls that the wind took, looked quite good in his 13th start of the season. The Rockies got on the board in the top of the third when Orlando Arcia drove a ball to right-center that got into the wind to put Colorado up 1-0.

In the fourth, the Mets took the lead after a walk to Starling Marte and Juan Soto was hit by a pitch, bringing up Pete Alonso. Alonso muscled a ball the opposite way for a three-run dinger to put the Mets ahead.

The lead would be short-lived, however, as a hit batsman put one on for Tyler Freeman, who hit one into the jet stream in right-center for a two-run shot, knotting the game up at 3-3.

One inning later, Francisco Lindor put the Mets up yet again with a right-handed home run that knocked starter Carson Palmquist out of the game. On the other side of the scorecard, Holmes settled in nicely and notched his first seven-inning start of his big-league career. All told, Holmes went seven, giving up three runs on three hits, while striking out three and not allowing a walk. Reed Garrett pitched a scoreless eighth to bring the Mets within three outs of a victory.

The Mets couldn’t really capitalize against the Colorado bullpen until the bottom of the eighth, when Soto hit a line-drive home run to right to give the Mets an insurance run. Edwin Diaz pitched the ninth for the Mets, and made things interesting from the start. Sam Hilliard singled to start the frame, and then moved over to second on a Diaz wild pitch. However, Diaz settled in and struck out the next three batters to close out the game and a 7-2 homestand.

Despite the offense mostly going cold after the fourth inning, Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez kept the game interesting with discussions of the history of “Surfin’ Bird,” the ‘dark themes’ of the novels Dracula and Frankenstein, and the perils of sleeping with mustache wax on your face.

Paul Blackburn will make his season debut tomorrow in Los Angeles against the first-place Dodgers.

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Box scores

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Win Probability Added

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What’s WPA?

Big Mets winner: Pete Alonso, +20.9% WPA
Big Mets loser: Luisangel Acuna, -7.6% WPA
Mets pitchers: +21.6% WPA
Mets hitters: +28.4% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Pete Alonso’s three-run dinger, +25.7% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Tyler Freeman’s home run, -24.8% WPA

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