Eduardo Escobar hits for cycle as Mets beat Padres
The Mets' Eduardo Escobar reacts after hitting a two-run home run during the eighth inning of a game against the Padres on Monday in San Diego. Credit: Gregory Bull
SAN DIEGO — Eduardo Escobar chugged around second base and headed for third, never once hesitating, and behind him, in the visitor’s dugout at Petco Park, a party erupted.
There were fist-bumps and shouts, Francisco Lindor teetering on the edge of the railing, looking for all the world like the metal bar couldn’t begin to contain his glee. Escobar, the beloved Met whose bat hadn’t cooperated earlier in the season, was not only breaking out, but he was making history, becoming the first Met in a decade to hit for the cycle. He did it in style, too — his six RBIs turned out to be the difference makers Monday, as the Mets withstood a small bullpen meltdown to turn aside the Padres, 11-5, for their third win in a row. Escobar went 4-for-5 and scored three runs. He is only the 11th Met to hit for the cycle, and the first since Scott Hairston in 2012.
And his teammates were behind him the whole way, Escobar said — not just literally, as they greeted him with full-bodied hugs when he finally made his way back to the dugout, but figuratively, too.
“They told me all the time, everything will be fine for you,” Escobar said. “Continue working hard, because it’s [the only thing] you can control, you know? Because your moment is coming… It’s really tough [to stay confident when things aren’t going well]. It’s really, really, really hard. But when you have the special group that you have here — [Pete] Alonso, [Starling] Marte, [Brandon] Nimmo, Buck [Showalter], the hitting coach [telling] me every day that everything will be fine and working, working, working. That’s the only control I have. I don’t control the result but now you see the result is coming.”
Escobar, who came into the day batting .227, is hitting .333 in his last 14 games, with three homers, 15 RBIs, a triple, five doubles and 10 runs. His contributions were further bolstered by a seven-inning performance by Carlos Carrasco, who allowed two runs on five hits with no walks and 10 strikeouts. Carrasco has won his six last decisions, improving to 7-1 with a 3.52 ERA. The performance mostly helped save a Mets bullpen that used five pitchers Sundayt and six the day before, for a total of 10 1/3 innings.
“It was really important because we used the bullpen [Sunday] and that’s what my goal was, to get six-plus innings,” Carrasco said.
All that combined to be enough to survive an eighth-inning adventure, courtesy of the relief corps: Joely Rodriguez put on two batters in the eighth, and Drew Smith gave up a two-out, three-run homer to Luke Voit to draw the Padres to within 7-5. Smith, though, did pitch 1 2/3, saving the rest of the bullpen.
Escobar’s two-run homer in the top of the eighth had given the Mets the short-lived five-run lead (7-2), and his two-run triple in the ninth provided breathing room.
The Mets scored three runs in the first off Padres starter Blake Snell, the first on J.D. Davis’ bases-loaded walk, and the next two on Escobar’s single. Up 3-1 in the fourth, Escobar led off with a double and came around to score on Nimmo’s single. Davis, who went 1-for-3, earned his second RBI of the day in the fifth, on a sacrifice fly that put the Mets up 5-1.
Nomar Mazara had a run-scoring double in the seventh off Carrasco, but Escobar hit his 405-foot shot to right in the eighth to put the Mets up 7-2.
The Mets scored four more in the ninth: two on Escobar’s triple, one on Jeff McNeil’s double and the last on Tomas Nido’s single. It was the first cycle of Escobar’s career at any level, he said.
“Anytime, it’s fun to watch but especially him — you know how much he means to his teammates and it’s almost like they [all] hit it,” Showalter said. “Very quietly, he’s reverting to his track record . . . He gets frustrated, but he never takes it out on the field and he never takes it out on the clubhouse. He’s a good example for everybody. I think everybody takes a little special emotion out of it.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
