Jose Quintana's gem, Mark Vientos' walk-off homer carry Mets over Cardinals
Jose Quintana of the New York Mets reacts after the eighth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals at Citi Field on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Before Mark Vientos’ walk-off home run on his second day back in the majors, before Harrison Bader’s tying single when the Mets were down to their final strike, before three excellent innings of relief from Edwin Diaz and Reed Garrett in a 4-2, 11-inning win over the Cardinals, Carlos Mendoza did what the modern baseball manager almost never does.
He ignored the numbers and went with his gut.
Jose Quintana was 7 2⁄3 innings and 95 pitches into his outing, the best from any Mets pitcher this season, when Mendoza made that familiar walk to the mound with Adam Ottavino ready and waiting in the bullpen.
Quintana knew he was coming. Mendoza knew what he was about to do, or at least he thought he did. Ottavino walked from the bullpen mound to the door.
Then Mendoza got closer and saw Quintana’s face. Then he heard the tone of his voice, listened to his words.
“Here we go,” Quintana said afterward. “I don’t want to go out. I want to keep fighting. Give me that chance to finish this inning. He right away was on the same page with me. ‘I trust you. Let’s go.’ ”
Mendoza said: “I left the dugout and I was pretty sure I was going to go to Adam. But because of the way he was throwing, the two lefties he got there and the conviction in that conversation on the mound, I was like, OK, all right, he’s your hitter. It’s your game.”
Quintana needed only four pitches to dispatch Willson Contreras, who has been the hottest batter for the Cardinals (13-15) through the first month of the season and had a hard-hit double in the first inning.
Bookending the at-bat were a pair of curveballs, one over the heart of the plate and one under the strike zone. Contreras whiffed at both. Quintana hopped off the mound with a yell and a fist bump, a rare display of on-field emotion for the 35-year-old lefthander.
“I’m not going to lie: I didn’t like the matchup,” Mendoza said with the sort of smile a manager wears when it all works out. “When somebody who is throwing a hell of a game — it’s one of those where [he leans on] the relationship. There’s going to be times when I’m going to be aggressive. But there’s also going to be times like today where you know what? I’ll give you a hitter. Go get him.”
Quintana struck out three and allowed one run, three hits and one walk in eight innings.
He became the first Mets starting pitcher this year to touch the mound in the seventh.
After a 26-pitch first inning, Quintana settled in and retired 21 of 23 batters to end his day. Mendoza praised him for consistently throwing strikes, not a theme of his previous starts. He pitched to contact — more than occasionally hard contact — and let the defenders behind him figure it out.
“That’s part of me,” Quintana said. “I felt more in control of the game today.”
Lance Lynn sailed through five scoreless innings but ran into trouble in the sixth. He faced three batters, retired none and allowed a tying home run by Francisco Lindor.
That set up the late dramatics. Lindor got thrown out at home by rocket-armed shortstop Masyn Winn in the bottom of the eighth. Vientos reached base in the bottom of the ninth, but Mendoza couldn’t pinch run for him with Joey Wendle even if he wanted to because Wendle was sick and not at the stadium. Garrett struck out two batters with a runner on third base in the top of the 10th. The Cardinals turned a risky 4-6-3 double play on DJ Stewart’s grounder in the bottom of the 10th.
Brendan Donovan put the Cardinals ahead with an RBI single in the 11th, but Bader matched him with a two-out, 0-and-2 line drive to center. To that point, the Mets (14-13) had been 0-for-15 with runners in scoring position.
Then up came Vientos, who was recalled to the majors on Saturday — potentially briefly — for Starling Marte, who went on the bereavement list. Vientos waited for a fastball up in the zone and eventually got one from lefthander Matthew Liberatore.
“This is the best feeling I’ve ever had,” Vientos said. “It’s almost a deja vu moment. I feel like I’ve lived that moment over and over in my head. So it was just like, let it go. Let all the energy out.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
