Dealt a bad hand at start, Mets play their cards just right to get win over Yankees in Subway Series opener
New York Mets pitcher Reed Garrett (75) pitches during the ninth inning against the New York Yankees , Friday, July 4, 2025, in New York. Credit: Noah K. Murray
The first 11 pitches of Friday’s Subway Series opener were high-octane nightmare fuel for the Mets, and specifically Carlos Mendoza, the manager tasked with coaxing 27 outs from a decimated staff running on fumes for weeks.
No offense to Justin Hagenman, but the idea that the Mets — a team with a $325 million payroll and World Series aspirations — were forced to use a career minor-leaguer to deliver those 11 pitches, in his very first MLB start at age 28, spoke to the franchise’s degree of desperation during the past three weeks.
Mendoza already had an entire five-man rotation on the injured list, and high-leverage reliever Jose Butto became the 10th pitcher overall when the Mets added him hours before Friday’s July Fourth matinee at Citi Field. Enter Hagenman, who immediately had trouble keeping his pitches from exiting the building.
First it was a 3-and-2 sinker that Jasson Dominguez golfed onto the leftfield Party Deck. Next, Aaron Judge hammered another sinker, this one belt-high, for a 428-foot blast that flew past The Martian’s shot by more than 20 rows.
“Obviously that’s not the start you’re looking to get off to,” Hagenman said. “But just know the best pitches are ahead of you, right? You just got to keep going, try to give the team as much as you can out there.”
What followed during the next two-plus hours was a master class in perseverance, guts and flat-out good baseball by the Mets, who managed to put their June swoon further in the rear-view mirror with a tightrope walk of a 6-5 victory that had the added benefit of piling more misery onto their Bronx rivals.
After a tying two-run homer by Juan Soto and a solo shot by Brett Baty that got the Mets within a run, Jeff McNeil delivered the go-ahead two-run shot off the once-dominant Luke Weaver with two outs in the seventh inning.
For the first 2 1⁄2 months, the Mets mostly leaned on their overachieving rotation and airtight bullpen to stay atop the NL East, but Friday’s win represented a more even distribution of the credit.
Hagenman held on for dear life, teeing up a trio of homers in his 4 1⁄3 innings, then handed off to Austin Warren — another emergency call-up — whose fifth pitch was a sinker (not unlike his predecessor’s) that Dominguez smacked over the leftfield wall to put the Yankees ahead 5-3. Yet Warren soldiered through the sixth, Huascar Brazoban supplied a scoreless seventh and the embattled Reed Garrett — owner of a 15.00 ERA in his previous eight appearances — plowed through the final six outs for a breathless save.
Garrett had been torched recently, and with the Mets’ casualties multiplying on a daily basis, it was only logical to assume something might be physically wrong with him, too. But with Edwin Diaz unavailable after closing on consecutive nights (for a total of seven outs), Mendoza turned to Garrett, who got by with a little help from his friends — particularly McNeil’s stunner of a diving stop for the second out of the ninth.
When Garrett finished up by retiring the dangerous Dominguez on a far more routine bouncer to McNeil, he jumped off the mound, pumping his fist while letting out a celebratory roar.
Sure, this was the Subway Series. But it also felt even bigger after where the Mets had come from, dropping 14 of 17 games and falling out of first place before rallying to beat the Yankees for their third straight win in front of a holiday crowd of 41,216. How fitting that it was Garrett who hand-delivered the W.
“It’s been a grind,” he said. “The month of June was a grind. So I think a little bit of that, and a little bit of, like, this is a huge series. This is what everybody in New York looks forward to. So to get the last six was big for me and just kind of a little subtle reminder to just keep going, keep fighting.”
That was Friday’s takeaway from a game the Mets weren’t supposed to win and a Subway Series that figured to be an uphill climb from the opening pitch. On paper, the Mets were outgunned in the mound matchups.
The Yankees had three legit major-league starters lined up, including the solid Carlos Rodon and a Cy Young Award favorite for Sunday’s finale in Max Fried.
The Mets? It wasn’t so much that they lacked quality arms. They were running out of bodies, period. After Hagenman, next up is Frankie Montas, who was last seen getting roughed up in Pittsburgh — he thought he was tipping pitches — followed by TBD for Sunday.
That’s as shaky a Mets rotation as we’ve ever seen for a Subway Series, and seeing Hagenman instantly blitzed for those two homers only confirmed the worst fears about these worrisome 72 hours in Flushing.
We can’t imagine what Mendoza was thinking in real time, other than maybe letting Travis Jankowski know to stay loose for potential mop-up duty.
But his faith ultimately was rewarded. Then again, with a decimated pitching staff, it’s not as if the manager had a ton of options.
“You got to give credit to the players,” Mendoza said. “They were the ones that executed it. And it always makes you feel a lot better after the game when you get results. You put them in positions where you feel like they’re going to have success and they went out there and did it today.”
All the Mets have to do now is pull off another pitching miracle. Two more times. With an even higher degree of difficulty. But after what they accomplished Friday, anything is possible.
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.
