Mets hit seven solo home runs in rout of Phillies to snap seven-game losing streak
New York Mets' Juan Soto follows through on a solo home run in the third inning against the Phillies on Saturday. Credit: AP/Laurence Kesterson
PHILADELPHIA — The Mets hit seven homers to snap a seven-game losing streak on Saturday, and it won’t matter on Sunday.
That’s not nihilism talking. The same thing was true before they trounced the Phillies, 11-4, at Citizens Bank Park. They had been ravaged by injuries and the schedule and could have entered the day already defeated. When the Phillies went up 3-1, it could have felt like a repeat of the seven games that came before.
Instead, Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo and Juan Soto hit back-to-back-to-back homers in the third. The bad memories disappeared about as quickly as the 110.1-mph laser off Soto’s bat.
“It’s a great feeling,” said Nimmo, who homered twice, as did Soto. “But the great and the worst part about baseball is that when you wake up tomorrow, you can’t care about yesterday. Hitting two home runs, I feel pretty good right now, but tomorrow morning, I can’t care, because it doesn’t matter . . . When you go 0-for-5 with five strikeouts, it doesn’t matter. You go and work on tomorrow and how to win the next day.”
What will count Sunday is this: The Mets, after falling out of a tie for first place in the NL East on Friday, moved back into a tie with the Phillies on Saturday. They also did plenty of psychological damage.
One of the worst situational-hitting teams in baseball, they pretty much did away with that problem for a night by figuratively smacking the seams off the ball, matching an MLB record by hitting seven solo home runs.
Lindor snapped an 0-for-20 skid with his home run, making this the 28th straight time the Mets have won when he’s gone deep. Jared Young homered in the eighth and Francisco Alvarez did the same in the ninth. Soto was 4-for-5 with four RBIs.
“I feel like every other game, we’ve had opportunities and we just haven’t really capitalized on it, and today, we capitalized,” Lindor said. “It felt good to contribute to the team, felt good to have the quality at-bats, but then to see two guys go way further than I did, it was pretty cool.”
After scoring three runs in their previous 31 innings, the Mets broke out of their nightmare-riddled slumber against starter Mick Abel. They hit four of their seven homers in the first three innings, including three straight for the first time since Oct. 4, 2022.
Nimmo, who entered the day batting .311 in his last 23 games, kicked it off in the first when, with one out, he smacked a gift-wrapped fastball down the middle 415 feet to center.
Griffin Canning allowed three straight one-out hits in the bottom of the first, singles by Kyle Schwarber and Alec Bohm and an RBI double by Nick Castellanos. Max Kepler grounded out to second to put the Phillies up 2-1. Otto Kemp doubled in the second, moved to third on a comebacker and scored when Canning’s changeup bounced in the dirt and away from Alvarez for a wild pitch that gave the Phillies a 3-1 lead.
That, though, is when the Mets busted out the true lumber, leading off the third with three straight homers. Lindor smacked one 406 feet to center, Nimmo golfed a curveball into the first few seats in right to tie it at 3-3 and Soto absolutely destroyed another fastball, sending it 391 feet to right for a 4-3 lead.
Soto hit his 16th homer of the season in the fifth, hitting an arching moonshot to the second deck in right to put the Mets up 5-3. His 26 career multi-homer games tied Jimmie Foxx for most through an age 26 season.
The Phillies got one back in the fifth on Bohm’s RBI single, but Canning and relievers Husacar Brazoban, Ryne Stanek and Chris Devenski kept it there.
Alvarez singled with one out in the sixth, Ronny Mauricio moved him to third with a two-out single and Lindor barely missed a three-run homer, lacing Tanner Banks’ fastball into the rightfield corner for a two-run double to make it 7-4.
The Mets added three runs in the eighth on Young’s homer and Soto’s two-run single. Alvarez hit his third homer of the year off Taijuan Walker in the ninth.
Asked if it felt as if a weight had been lifted, Soto said: “We haven’t finished anything. Whatever happens in the past is in the past. I don’t think it’s any lighter or anything like that. We’re going to face a good, really good team tomorrow. We’ve just got to come back tomorrow and try to beat them again.”
It’s the short memory necessary to survive a long season, and on Saturday, the Mets used it in their favor.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
