Wilmer Flores' walk-off hit in 11th snaps Blue Jays' streak at 11
Wilmer Flores #4 of the New York Mets celebrates his 11th-inning game-winning hit against the Toronto Blue Jays at Citi Field on Monday, June 15, 2015. Credit: Jim McIsaac
It was a game they should have lost against a team that had seemingly forgotten how to lose. But not this time, not these Mets, not right now.
Down a run and down to their final out in the 11th, Lucas Duda, hitting against the shift, singled in Michael Cuddyer from first and Wilmer Flores grounded a single up the middle for the third walk-off RBI of his career as the Mets beat the Blue Jays, 4-3, Monday night to snap Toronto's 11-game win streak.
It came a day after the Mets rallied from a five-run deficit.
"It's a great feeling," Flores said. "When you win games like this, it's because you did everything right . . . I'm not thinking walk-off. I'm thinking about the process."
The heroics were made possible by a rare miscue from closer Jeurys Familia, who came in with a one-run lead in the ninth and allowed a first-pitch home run to left to Jose Bautista, barely fair and barely out. In the 11th, Hansel Robles walked Ezequiel Carrera with one out, and, with Carrera going, allowed a soft single to Chris Colabello to put runners at the corners for Dioner Navarro, whose midrange fly ball to right scored the go-ahead run.
But after Cuddyer reached on a fielder's choice, Duda blooped Brett Cecil's offering right inside the line in left. Cuddyer was going on the pitch and was able to score.
"You just bust it until you have to stop," Cuddyer said. "Fortunately, I didn't have to stop. I think it's resilience. We know we're always going to be in the game and we're always going to give ourselves a chance to win it."
Duda went to second on the throw and scored easily enough on Flores' single.
Noah Syndergaard had an easy go of it. He was nearly flawless in his no-decision, pitching six innings of two-hit ball, with a career-high 11 strikeouts over six, and then coming back in the bottom of the sixth to lay down a perfect bunt that would incite a Mets rally against Mark Buerhle, a pitcher who, up to that point, had been even better than he was.
"They've got a deadly lineup," Syndergaard said. "They've got the potential to do some serious damage and it instills a lot of confidence in myself that I can go out and have success like that against a caliber of a team like that."
Syndergaard threw 109 pitches, 65 for strikes. His only big mistake was a loud one: a laser shot by Bautista that rattled around the second deck of the leftfield stands, giving the Blue Jays a 1-0 lead only three batters into the game. Buerhle, meanwhile, was perfect through five, until Duda's leadoff grounder in the sixth took a bad hop over the glove of Edwin Encarnacion at first and skittered to the corner, where it was bobbled by Bautista and ruled a double. Duda budged no further, though, as the lefty retired the next three.
The Mets finally got to him in the sixth, though, when Kevin Plawecki reached on a throwing error by Jose Reyes and moved to second on Syndergaard's bunt, which stopped perfectly a few feet from the batter's box. RBI doubles by Juan Lagares and Ruben Tejada gave the Mets a 2-1 lead.
"They're huge wins, especially when you fall behind like we did," manager Terry Collins said. "It builds tremendous confidence in the clubhouse that it can be done."
Fittingly, though, it was Flores who provided the most appropriate summation of who the Mets are now: "We battled. We are not giving up."
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
