Mets 11 Astros 1 (Minute Maid Park, Houston, TX)
Mets record: 34-38
Mets streak: Won 1
WP - Max Scherzer (6-2)
LP - Hunter Brown (6-4)
Seat on the Korner:
We select the star of the game and virtually invite him to a Seat on the Korner, just as Ralph Kiner used to do for his studio postgame show on WOR-channel 9 broadcasts in the early decades of the Mets.
The guy the Mets are going to need to be chosen for the seat on the days he pitches definitely earned it tonight, going eight innings and giving up a run on four hits to lead the charge to victory over the Astros.
Need to Know
The Mets beat the Astros for the first time since 2014.
This was the first time Max Scherzer pitched at Minute Maid Park since Game 7 of the 2019 World Series.
The Mets are catching the Astros at an opportune time, as this was their fifth straight loss as they are missing their big gun Yordan Alvarez, who has an oblique injury.
Daniel Vogelbach, after going homerless from May 7th until Saturday, now has his second home run in three games after his solo HR got the Mets started in the third. Vogelbach would add a two run single for a 3 RBI night.
Francisco Lindor's three run HR capped off the five run third, and he also had a two run double in the 9th to complete a five RBI night.
Pete Alonso's double in the 8th was his first hit since he came off the IL on Sunday.
Francisco Alvarez was hit in his throwing hand with a foul ball, but stayed in the game until the 9th when he was replaced by Omar Narvaez.
Tommy Pham's RBI single in the 9th gives him 18 RBI in his last 16 games.
The Mets sent nine men to the plate in their five run third inning, and ten men to the plate in their five run ninth inning.
Grant Hartwig made his major league debut in the ninth to finish off the blowout.
Turning Point
It's always hard to find a turning point in a straight line game such as this. You can say that the Vogelbach home run in the first was somewhat of a turning point. But in lieu of a turning point, let's go with the point where the game became comfortable, which was Francisco Lindor's three run homer to make the score 5-0:
It turned a small Mets lead into a big Mets lead, so there's that.
Three Keys
Mad Max: It was a point of discussion in our zoom cast with Casey Stern tonight. If the Mets are going to improve and make the playoffs, the production is going to have to come from the players on the roster now, not anybody that Billy Eppler is trading for. Paramount among those players is Scherzer. Calling his season "up and down" would be kind, as it certainly seems like it's been more down than up, even with a 5-2 record coming into tonight. But Scherzer was absolutely brilliant, going eight innings in a game where until Yanier Diaz's home run in the 7th, Scherzer was chasing "The Maddux" (a shutout in under 100 pitches, for the uninitiated.)
Mad Max's slider: The difference between Scherzer's last start and this start was his slider. He hung sliders to Giancarlo Stanton and DJ LeMahieu which spiraled him downward in his last start. But on Monday is slider was sharp. I had someone message me during the game and said he thought that Scherzer had made a mechanical adjustment that was giving him more break on his slider. I'm not Rick Peterson so I'm not going to pretend to know the difference, but check out his sliders from tonight below:
Early leads are nice: Another thing we discussed on Down on the Korner tonight (plug) was the fact that it has to be exhausting to a point when you have to fight from behind every night. Scherzer's dominance from jump gave the Mets a chance to breathe, and their five run third returned that favor to Scherzer. Life is easier when you're up 5-0 instead of being down 2-0. It seems like an obvious thing to say, but it really has been a big difference between 2022 and '23.
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