Mets roll past lowly Marlins again
The Mets' Mark Canha greets Pete Alonso after his two-run home run against the Miami Marlins in the fifth inning at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Kodai Senga loves pitching against the Marlins. Pete Alonso loves hitting against the Marlins.
The 2023 Mets love playing against the Marlins.
Senga allowed one run in six innings in his Citi Field debut and Alonso and Eduardo Escobar clubbed two-run home runs on Saturday in the Mets’ 5-2 victory before a sellout crowd of 42,306.
Senga (2-0, 1.59 ERA, both starts against Miami) is off to a sizzling start after signing a five-year, $75 million deal with the Mets. He allowed three hits, walked three and struck out six in a tidy 90-pitch effort.
“It’s fun to watch him pitch,” manager Buck Showalter said. “He’s got an idea. He’s got a talented hand.”
Alonso’s fifth home run of the season was his second in two days against Miami. Twenty-five of Alonso’s 151 career home runs have come against the Marlins.
The Mets improved to 5-1 against Miami (and 5-4 overall). As the Mets continue to face and beat the Marlins, those three demoralizing defeats in Milwaukee last week are starting to fade away like one of Senga’s ghost forkballs.
The only bad news for the Mets is that after Sunday’s series finale, they don’t face Miami again until Sept. 18. MLB’s new balanced schedule has division foes playing each other 13 times instead of 19.
The Mets celebrated Senga’s home debut with ghostly images on the giant/mega/uber centerfield scoreboard. Fans welcomed him by hanging ghosts for his strikeouts.
“Obviously, I was very grateful and I feel very warm and welcome,” Senga said through an interpreter. “Hopefully next time I can put up more ghosts.”
As he did in his first outing, Senga had to work out of trouble in the first inning.
In his first start, in Miami, Senga allowed the first three batters to reach before working out of the bases-loaded jam. He went on to allow one run and strike out eight in 5 1⁄3 innings in the Mets’ 5-1 victory.
In this one, the second and third Miami batters lined singles before Senga struck out Jorge Soler and got Jean Segura on a first-pitch squibber to fill-in first baseman Mark Canha, who was giving Alonso a DH day.
The Mets were leading 1-0 in the fifth when Francisco Lindor beat out a slow grounder to third for a two-out single.
With Alonso due up next, Marlins catcher Nick Fortes went out to talk to lefthanded starter Trevor Rogers (0-2, 6.00). He had settled down after a shaky first inning in which he gifted birthday boy Jeff McNeil (No. 31) a bases-loaded walk for the game’s first run.
Fortes had his say, and then Miami pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. started walking toward the mound.
Back-to-back mound visits? In the speeded-up baseball era?
As Stottlemyre spoke with Rogers, the umpires huddled. Showalter wondered if Miami should be charged with two of their five allotted mound visits. The umpires decided it was only one charged visit.
But did the Marlins find a loophole when a team wants to slow things down for its pitcher? Just keep sending person after person to the mound?
“We could get real technical here,” Showalter said. “They converged together and decided what I thought was fair. Just hope that’s the same way if it happens to us.”
The long visits, however, did not lead to anything positive for Miami. Alonso launched a 3-and-2 pitch into the leftfield seats for a two-run home run to give the Mets a 3-0 lead.
Rookie manager Skip Schumaker then made another mound visit — to remove Rogers after the proverbial horse had left the barn.
Senga wobbled a bit in the sixth. He allowed a long leadoff home run by Jazz Chisholm Jr. to make the score 3-1.
A pair of walks, with one out to Luis Arraez and with two outs (and on four pitches) to Segura, led to a mound visit from Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and Senga’s interpreter.
That mound visit worked. Senga got Avisail Garcia on a first-pitch grounder to third to end the inning.
“Obviously, it was a time where if they get a big hit, it could sway the game quite a bit,” Senga said. “So, obviously, a very good time for him to come out and I think it calmed me down a little bit.”
Escobar made it 5-1 with a two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth off Huascar Brazoban. It was Escobar’s first home run of the season.
John Curtiss worked out of a jam in the seventh and threw a scoreless eighth. David Robertson picked up his second save with a 1-2-3 ninth.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
