Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso homer in eighth inning of Mets' come-from-behind, extra-inning win over Orioles

BALTIMORE — For all the Mets’ relative success this season, there’s been one area where they’ve been curiously and consistently lacking. Like Superman devoid of the yellow sun, when they leave the friendly confines of Flushing Meadows their strength is sapped, their bats go quiet, and their pitching scuffles.

And for so much of Tuesday’s 7-6, 10-inning win over the cellar-dwelling Orioles at Camden Yards, it looked like much of the same. The Mets had a one-run lead erased by a disastrous four-run sixth, fell behind by four in the seventh, and were even victim to an immaculate inning by rookie Brandon Young. That’s not exactly a promising start to the six-game road trip that will bring them to the All-Star break.

But then Francisco Lindor happened. And Pete Alonso. And Juan Soto.

Lindor and Alonso socked a pair of two run-homers to tie the score in the eighth, and Soto drove in the winning run on the first pitch of the 10th inning — poking Yennier Cano’s knee-high changeup through the right side of the infield to drive in Lindor, the ghost runner on second. With Edwin Diaz having pitched the ninth, Huascar Brazoban retired the Orioles in order to preserve the win.

“Offensively, on a night when the first four, five innings we were pretty quiet, I thought we made some good adjustments and then obviously the at-bats got better,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “That was a hell of a win there.”

None too soon, either: Going into Tuesday, the Mets 19-25 (.432) road record was the eighth-worst in baseball, and significantly worse than that of any team over .500. The top four of Brandon Nimmo, Lindor, Soto and Alonso went 8-for-19, with two homers, a double and six RBIs.

Before all that, the Mets needed to claw back behind that explosive eighth. Nimmo led off that inning with a seven-pitch at-bat that resulted in a single, and Lindor followed it up with an opposite-field homer off Bryan Baker’s 96.9-mph fastball, drawing the Mets to within 6-4. Soto singled and then Alonso blasted an outside slider 407 feet to right-center to tie the score at 6. It was Alonso’s 21st homer of the year, his third in three games, and the 247th of his career. He’s now five behind Darryl Strawberry’s franchise record.

“He gave me the opportunity to see every pitch,” Lindor said of Nimmo’s at-bat. “The way he was fouling pitches off, I knew kind what the pitcher was doing . . . I kind of had an idea of what the fastball was doing [and after that] what the changeup was doing as well.”

The Mets’ road woes felt downright historic in the fifth, when Young, nursing a 1-0 lead and making just his fifth big-league start, threw the 119th immaculate inning in MLB history, and the second this year, with strikeouts of Jesse Winker, Jeff McNeil and Luis Torrens.

But baseball is not without a sense of humor, so when Young went back out in the fifth, the third pitch he threw to Ronny Mauricio was smacked 362 feet to right to tie the score at 1. Three pitches after that, Brett Baty lined a curveball to the wall in right for a double. One pitch after that, Nimmo lined a grooved 93-mph fastball to left-center — a ball that Cedric Mullins just missed on a sliding catch attempt. The throw beat Baty to the plate, but the ball bounced out of Jacob Stallings’ glove to give the Mets the short-lived lead.

Clay Holmes, though, loaded the bases with no outs in the sixth. Ryan O’Hearn then lined an 0-and-2 slider to the wall in right for a two-run double, giving the Orioles a 3-2 lead. Ramon Laureano hit a bloop single to left to make it 5-2, ending Holmes’ night. He allowed five runs and seven hits with a walk and five strikeouts in five innings.

In the seventh, Jackson Holliday hit a solo homer off Alex Carrillo — the flame-throwing former Independent league pitcher that the Mets signed out of Venezuela last winter — to put the Orioles up 6-2. Carillo otherwise performed well in his major-league debut, allowing only that hit in 1  1⁄3 innings.

“It’s big because we’re winners,” Brazoban said via interpreter, referencing the unit’s contributions. “When the hitters make that effort to tie the game and then take the lead, in our minds, it’s ‘alright, let’s keep in there. Let’s go out there and do our job and win the game.’ ”

Notes & quotes: Starling Marte was put on the 10-day injured list with what’s believed to be a bone bruise on his right knee. Mendoza doesn’t believe the injury to be serious and expects to have Marte back after the All-Star break; he’ll get imaging on the joint Friday…Jesse Winker (oblique) was activated off the IL, DHed and batted fifth Tuesday; he went 0-for-2 before getting lifted for pinch hitter Mark Vientos in the sixth…Kodai Senga (hamstring) is on track to pitch Friday in the first game of their series against the Royals. Sean Manaea (oblique, elbow) could rejoin the rotation Sunday.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

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.