Pete Alonso's two home runs, Griffin Canning's six shutout innings help Mets cruise past Dodgers
The Mets' Pete Alonso, right, scores after hitting a two-run home run as Brandon Nimmo waits for him while Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing kneels at the plate during the first inning of a game Wednesday in Los Angeles. Credit: AP/Mark J. Terrill
LOS ANGELES — It had been nothing but high drama at Chavez Ravine going into Wednesday. The games had been close, and the comebacks electric. The Mets have had to contend with a shortened bullpen, a brutalizing Dodgers lineup, and the ghost of last year’s NLCS elimination.
“It’s really fun” hitting at Dodger Stadium, Pete Alonso said.
“Fun.” Not terrorizing or exhausting. And after Alonso continued his ownership of Dodger Stadium — hitting two homers en route to an atypically easy 6-1 win at Dodger Stadium Wednesday night — you could see where he was coming from.
The Mets scored five on Alonso’s homers — a two-run shot in the first and a three-run bomb in the eighth — and rode a brilliant start by Griffin Canning to take two of the first three games of this four-game set. In 24 games here, Alonso has nine homers and 26 RBIs.
“I just see the ball really well here,” Alonso. “Optically, it’s good. The batter’s box feels good. Hitting in historic parks is really cool. It’s a special place.”
Alonso has 14 homers and 53 RBIs, and 10 RBIs in his last four games; it was his first multi-homer game of the season. His 240 homers are two behind David Wright for second-most in franchise history (Wright, incidentally, was on the field pregame.)
The Mets have played their West Coast rivals six times in the last week and a half, and won four, and officially took the season series Wednesday with one more game to go. Three of those games have gone to extra innings, and four have been decided by two runs or fewer.
Above that, this series has witnessed the true resurgence of the Soto Shuffle, and Juan Soto, who walked three times, was seen playfully jockeying with Dodgers starter Tony Gonsolin after walks in the third and fifth. It's a good sign, considering the frustrations that have plagued his first few months with the Mets.
Luisangel Acuna, who didn't start, spent a chunk of the game wearing catcher’s gear in the dugout, and even snagged a foul ball with his mitt in the fifth and framed the “pitch." When Canning struck out Shohei Ohtani looking to end that inning, he snapped his gum and swaggered off the mound.
“That’s what we are, you know?” Carlos Mendoza said of the team playing loose. “After a tough game [Tuesday] we come back the next day . . . We know we’re good, and you’re going to go through times where it’s not going to be easy, and you’ve just got to keep it the same. Don’t get too high, don’t get too low, understanding you’ve got a long way to go. But also understanding that we’ve got a good team here.”
The Dodgers lone run came on Andy Pages' solo shot off Ryne Stanek in the ninth.
The nightmare West Coast trips of old, this was not.
The Mets scored three quick runs in the first, on Soto’s RBI ground out and Alonso’s two-run blast — a first-pitch slider from Gonsolin that he launched 392-feet to right stake the Mets the 3-0 lead.
Canning used five different pitches, including a slider that bottomed out at 86.8-mph and a fastball that topped at 96.6-mph, to limit a potent lineup to no runs on three hits with a walk and seven strikeouts over six innings.
It was a bounce-back outing for Canning, who’d been touched up for eight runs, six earned, over his last two starts — a span of 5 2/3 innings. The Dodgers big top three of Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman went 2-for-11 with three strikeouts.
“Pretty impressive, the way he used all of his pitches,” Mendoza said. “He’s been awesome for us. He’s been pretty consistent. The last two outings [didn't go well] but overall, we feel really good every time he takes the mound.”
The biggest Dodgers threat came after Jose Castillo replaced Canning in the seventh: He let up a one-out double to Pages and hit Michael Conforto with a pitch, but got both Dalton Rushing and Kike Hernandez to strike out swinging. Alonso padded the lead in the eighth, hitting a 447-foot moonshot off Ryan Loutos that froze the outfielders in their place.
It all continued the Mets' steely battleplan against one of the best offenses in baseball.
“They’re great hitters but [it’s about] communicating between innings with [catcher] Luis [Torrens] about how you want to attack guys and trying to show different stuff and getting ahead of them helps for sure,” Canning said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
Sure sounds like it.
Notes & quotes: The Mets got good news on Mark Vientos after an MRI showed that he only sustained a low-grade hamstring strain after hurting himself trying to run out a grounder Monday. He’ll get treatment for the next 10 to 14 days until he’s symptom-free and, if all goes well, he’ll be able to resume baseball activities then, Mendoza said . . . Sean Manaea (oblique) is scheduled to begin his rehab assignment with Single-A Brooklyn Monday. He’s expected to throw two innings of about 35 pitches.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
