Rock stars: Mets' Big 3 of Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso and Juan Soto all homer in same game for first time
Mets outfielder Juan Soto follows through on a home run during the eighth inning of a game against the Colorado Rockies on Sunday at Citi Field. Credit: Noah K. Murray
The Mets began their nine-game homestand with an excruciating, rain-interrupted, injury-riddled 13-inning loss to the defending world champions that took nearly six hours to complete.
The curtain closed Sunday afternoon, however, in a much tidier, far more satisfying fashion.
With the Citi Field crowd of 43,224 on its feet, the again-untouchable Edwin Diaz fired a 99-mph fastball past the hapless Brenton Doyle for the clinching strikeout in the Mets’ 5-3 win over the Rockies.
The calendar had flipped to June since that opening loss to the Dodgers, and by the time Carlos Mendoza & Co. were shaking hands after Sunday’s victory — their seventh in eight games — it actually felt like a month ago, not just over a week.
In between, the Mets mostly did what they were supposed to do, aside from one slip-up loss to the woeful White Sox. They built some real momentum for yet another meeting with the Dodgers, this time at Chavez Ravine, beginning Monday night.
It helped that there’s no better ego-booster in the majors right now than the rock-bottom Rockies, a nine-win outfit that should easily relieve the 2024 White Sox of their one-year burden of being modern baseball’s worst team (a title the ’62 Mets held, incredibly, for 62 years).
Mendoza’s crew would never say so, but the mission this past week at Citi Field — where the Mets improved to 24-7, the best home record in baseball — was to beat up on a pair of bad teams, the kind of bullying that World Series contenders do.
On Sunday, the Mets completed a three-game sweep of Colorado by relying on homers from Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso and Juan Soto, the first time this season their Big 3 all went deep in the same game.
“It’s baseball. Anything can happen,” Mendoza said. “But you want to take care of business.”
Now the Mets go up several weight classes — again — to spar with the National League’s Mike Tyson, a Dodgers team that used the Yankees for a punching bag in the first two games of this weekend’s World Series rematch in L.A.
Still, they have reason to be confident heading out to the West Coast, especially after the Mets’ pitching staff did a superb job keeping the Dodgers’ own Big 3 in check before the Yankees got bulldozed at Chavez Ravine (before Sunday’s 7-3 victory, they were outscored 26-7 even though the Dodgers were without injured Mookie Betts).
For one, Soto could be ready to join the party. He has homered in back-to-back games and even smacked Sunday’s 388-foot blast from one knee, launching an 88-mph splitter off Rockies reliever Zach Agnos.
Soto has reached base in seven of his last eight plate appearances, and sure it’s crummy Colorado, but at least the $765 million slugger is chipping in rather than simply rolling over weak grounders to the right side.
“I’ve felt good since Day 1. The results just haven’t been there,” Soto said. “Finally I’m getting some balls landing. Finding some holes, finding some gaps. We just got to keep working on it.”
It’s amazing that it took until Game No. 59 for Soto, Lindor and Alonso to clear the fence on the same day, a scenario the Mets envisioned as a far more regular occurrence when owner Steve Cohen put up the cash to make it happen. Lindor has done his part, leading the Mets with 13 homers, and they’ve won 26 straight games in which he’s gone deep, tied for the second-longest such streak with Lou Gehrig (1927-28 Yankees) and Ken Caminiti (1997-98 Padres). The Dodgers’ Carl Furillo is tops at 29 games (1951-53).
Alonso’s three-run blast in the fourth inning was his 12th of the season, giving the Mets a 3-1 lead at the time, and the three RBIs were his most in a game since April 11. Soto tacked on his homer in the eighth.
The Mets’ original lineup design had these top three together for maximum impact, but Soto was moved out of his preferred No. 2 spot two weeks ago in an effort to spark a sluggish offense. The hope is that Sunday’s fireworks will become more of a trend than an outlier.
“I think for us, the biggest thing is just fighting the fight every day,” Alonso said. “Just owning our consistency and being present in the day to day. Because that’s really the superpower and the secret sauce when it comes to getting where we want to go.”
On the eve of their L.A. return, the Mets were sitting where they want to be — back atop the NL East, a place they hadn’t been since the Phillies surged past them on May 19.
As Mendoza mentioned, taking care of business this past week against MLB’s bottom-feeders was the primary reason for that, and you can’t overestimate the importance of having Diaz dominant enough again to put the hammer down.
He flashed a brief glimpse of mortality Sunday by allowing a leadoff single by Sam Hilliard in the ninth, snapping the closer’s hitless streak of 30 at-bats, but he whiffed the next three Rockies with a nasty 89-mph slider to fan Ezequiel Tovar, a 99-mph heater to wrap a dismissive three-pitch strikeout of Ryan McMahon and then the final strikeout of Doyle.
Diaz is 13-for-13 in save chances with a 13.68 K/9 rate, and he put the Mets on their cross-country flight Sunday in the best frame of mind possible.
“It’s fantastic,” Lindor said.
Can’t feel any better than that.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
