Mets pummel Diamondbacks, sweep series in the desert

The Mets are now 4 games below .500 and 6.5 out of a wild card spot - can the Mets actually crawl back into the race?

Justin Mears

Jul 7, 2023

What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️

The Mets pounded the Diamondbacks 9-0 on Thursday night ( Box)
Every Mets starter with the exception of Brandon Nimmo contributed at least one hit
Carlos Carrasco went eight sensational innings, shutting out the Diamondbacks and scattering just three hits
Pete Alonso crushed a line drive homer in the first that set the tone for this one
Francisco Lindor collected five hits including two triples and a homer
Before the game started Buck Showalter announced Brett Baty' has a minor hamstring issue and was not going to start the game
New reliever Trevor Gott made his Mets debut and threw a scoreless 9th to finish the game
Francisco Álvarez homered in all three of the games in the desert
The Mets improved to 26-15 when scoring five or more runs in a game, 26-4 when the starter goes at least six innings, 13-9 against the NL West, enjoyed their fourth series sweep of the season, are 21-27 on the road and a perfect 5-0 in July

Who’s Hot 🔥

Francisco Álvarez crushed home runs in each of the Mets three games wit Arizona - he is hitting .353/.421/1.059 with four home runs and seven RBI over his last five games
Francisco Lindor is hitting .328/.419/.738 with six home runs and 13 RBI over his last 17 games
Carlos Carrasco has a 2.12 ERA over his last three starts, a span of 17 innings. Opponents are hitting .213 against him during this stretch

Today’s Game 🗓

Match-up: Mets (41-46) vs. Padres (41-46)

Where: PETCO Park – San Diego, CA

Starters: RHP Justin Verlander (3-4, 3.66 ERA) vs. RHP Yu Darvish (5-6, 4.84 ERA)

When: 9:40 PM EDT

Where to Watch: SNY

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Too little too late, or the start of one hell of a chapter? ✍️

The first three months of the season were nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for the New York Mets, who comically found ways to lose games they appeared to have in the bag at an unprecedented pace.

And then there were the comic losses they had no chance in to begin with.

The June swoon the Mets experienced made them the laughing stock of the national baseball audience, and fans in rival cities enjoyed poking fun at the misfortune of the team with the highest payroll in baseball sitting 10 games under .500.

While the Mets are far from perfect and could just as easily regress once again, for now anyway, the team is playing like a club motivated to shut some people up.

They’re also playing like a team motivated to make a second half run.

After a devastatingly difficult defeat in the series opener with the Giants a week ago, the Mets have now won five games in a row and are firing on all cylinders. If they’re going to dig themselves out of the hole they put themselves in it will take a full team effort—and believe it or not, heading into play today they’re half of the way towards returning to .500.

The Mets are starting to experience some positive vibes, and their best players are finally beginning to produce. On Thursday night in Phoenix, New York got home runs from all three of their best power hitters—Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor, and Francisco Álvarez. Alonso and Alvarez each drove in three runs, Lindor scored three times and had five hits (including two triples in his first two at-bats), and Carlos Carrasco threw arguably the best game of his tenure in Queens.

The Mets still have a long way to go if they’re going to get back into this thing, and sweeping series rather than just winning them is the only way to undue a lot of the damage they did in the first half.

As we’ve said on this site several times this week, nothing short of running the table to the All-Star Game is enough to legitimately get this team back into a playoff conversation.

Looking ahead to their series in San Diego, their objective is to obviously to win the series, but if the Mets were to win the first two the excitement of what they could accomplish by finishing a sweep would be palpable.

In the end, while the natural tendency of fans is to get carried away and make things bigger than they are, the Mets have to stay in the moment and not look too far ahead.

And given how the first half went for the club, the fans need to sit tight too. Five wins in a row is nice, but the question now is whether or not the tide has turned for the Mets.

Things won’t be easy for this team—they never are—but with a little luck we could have October baseball to care about later this fall.

Around the League 🚩

The NL Central leading Reds scored two in the 10th inning and beat the Nationals 5-4 - The Reds are now 49-39 on the year and hold a two game lead over the Brewers in the NL Central
The Blue Jays swept a double header from the White Sox in Chicago to improve to 48-40 on the year
Hit machine Luis Arraez contributed three hits to raise his average back up to .388 for the year, but it wasn’t enough to steer the Marlins past the Cardinals in a 3-0 loss
The Orioles pounded the Yankees 14-1 in the Bronx - Gunnar Henderson hit two homers and drove in five runs for Baltimore