Three takeaways from Mets' Game 5 win over Dodgers in NLCS
Tug McGraw said it first, but Francisco Lindor repeated it when this team needed to hear it the most.
“If you have no belief, you shouldn’t be here,” Lindor said Thursday night after the Mets fell into a 3-1 hole in the NLCS. “You’ve gotta believe."
On Friday, the Mets fought, and because of that, they play on.
Here are some takeaways from the Mets' convincing 12-6 win over the Dodgers in a do-or-die Game 5 at Citi Field on Friday night:
1. We’re saying there’s a chance.
The odds remain long, but the Mets showed some distinct promise in the victory — touching up Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty and finally getting their lineup going. Lindor and Pete Alonso have said time and time again that this team is inured to playing when the stakes are high and elimination is nigh, and their experience showed Friday night.
They battered Dodgers pitching thanks to a well-balanced attack ignited by Alonso’s three-run homer in the first inning. It was bolstered by the likes of Jesse Winker and Jeff McNeil in their first starts of the series, along with Francisco Alvarez’s reawakened bat. The Mets didn’t strike out a single time.
All this gives them a difficult — but not impossible — avenue to a World Series. In Game 6, Sean Manaea, who handled the Dodgers well in Game 2, will be on the hill against a bullpen game. That sets up Luis Severino to be the Mets' Game 7 starter if it gets that far. Aside from a few bullpen arms, most of their relievers should be rested for Sunday, too. Manager Carlos Mendoza also seemed open to keeping Winker (2-for-3 with a walk, three runs and an RBI) in the lineup.
“We're capable of putting together games like this, especially when one through nine, we're clicking, we're not chasing,” Mendoza said. “I thought today we did a really good job with their starter where he was trying to get us to chase, and we didn't do that. We attacked him when he tried to come in the zone and we did some damage . . . We showed up today.”
2. Alvarez might be back.
Alvarez, who came into the day hitting .167 this postseason, went 3-for-5 with a run and an RBI. On Thursday, he said he benefited from being taken aside from Starling Marte — “he doesn’t talk too much . . . and I feel like he talked to me from his heart,” he said — and essentially getting told not to try to do too much.
On Friday, Marte said he noticed a difference in Alvarez’s confidence (to be clear, Alvarez also was working on making mechanical tweaks to better catch up to fastballs).
“He's the type of player that you can say something to and he'll put it into practice,” Marte said through an interpreter. “I think that's a good thing to take away from when you're having these conversations with young players that they listen to you and that they try to get it right. It may not be the first day. It may not be the second day, but in a couple of days they tend to pick it up. It brings a joy to us veterans to be able to have those conversations with young guys because you know they're listening, but they also want to be good and help the team.”
3. Everything is going to have to go right for this ride to keep rolling.
With a two-game cushion, the Dodgers held back a little Friday. Manager Dave Roberts could have pulled Flaherty sooner (he said the pitcher was battling an illness) but decided to let his starter wear it for three innings — a span in which he allowed eight runs, eight hits and four walks.
“There's still more baseball to play in the series,” Roberts said. “You have to kind of remain steadfast in how you use your pitchers because ultimately, it's about winning four games in a seven-game series. When you're careless, then it will show itself at some point, certainly in a long series.”
Of note: The Mets were up by as many as eight runs in the fourth inning before Reed Garrett allowed three runs. Mendoza was forced to use Ryne Stanek and Edwin Diaz to close out the game.
“They're not going to shut down,” Mendoza said of the Dodgers' offense. “They're going to continue to put pressure on you. That's a really good offense there. I'm proud of the guys."
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
