Desperate for a lift in after three sluggish losses in a row, the Mets received timely contributions from all corners
of their roster Saturday night and pieced together an 8-4 win over the Washington Nationals at Citi Field.
The Mets found themselves trailing after managing two hits through the first five innings. But they were big hits — the first two home runs of the season for Carlos Beltran — and they kept the Mets close before a three-run outburst in the sixth gave them a lead they did not relinquish.
Chris Capuano gave the Mets a workmanlike outing in his first start for the team. He went six innings, allowing four runs, seven hits and a walk, while striking out eight, and registered his first win for his new team.
In January the Mets signed Capuano, a left-hander, to a one-year deal with a base salary of $1.5 million. That price tag will prove to be a huge bargain if he can approach the levels at which he pitched in 2005, when he won 18 games, and in 2006, when he made the National League All-Star team.
For now, he remains something of a wild card. Capuano has had reconstructive elbow surgery twice in his career, most recently in May 2008, which forced him to miss the next two seasons. In 2010, he went 4-4 with a 3.95 earned run average in 24 games for the Milwaukee Brewers.
He made his first appearance for the Mets last Sunday, allowing one run, three hits and a walk in two-thirds of an inning in the team’s win over the Florida Marlins.
Capuano looked stronger Saturday. He gave up a three-run homer to second baseman Danny Espinoza after allowing consecutive singles to Wilson Ramos and Rick Ankiel in the second inning, and he gave up a solo homer to Ian Desmond to open the fifth. But he scrappily worked his way out of tense jams in the third and fifth innings, getting the left-handed-hitting Ankiel out both times with runners in scoring position.
Before the game, Manager Terry Collins expressed concern about his starters’ inability to pitch deeper into games. Going into Saturday, Mets starters had reached the six-inning plateau in only two of the first seven games.
“I don’t have an answer for it,” Collins said. “I certainly thought they got enough work in spring training.”
He added, “We’ve got a long way to go yet, and I’ve seen in the past where some of the your guys, all of a sudden you need then in July, and they’re shot, so we’ve got to start getting some innings out of our starters.”
Tom Gorzelanny started for the Nationals and gave up six runs on four hits and two walks. He struck out eight batters and was highly effective early on.
But the Mets’ offense ultimately prevailed, thanks to the awakening of Beltran’s bat. After entering the game hitting 4 for 21 with two runs batted in, Beltran smashed his first two home runs of the season.
His first, a powerful two-run shot into the left-field seats, gave the Mets a 2-0 lead in the first inning. His second — hit with the same ferocity and to nearly the same spot in the stands — tied the score, 3-3, in the fourth.
With the Mets trailing by 4-3 in the sixth, Beltran hit another long drive to left field. Although the ball fell short of the wall, left fielder Jerry Hairston appeared to lose it in the lights, allowing Beltran to get to second and David Wright, who opened the inning with a walk, to move to third.
Two batters later, Ike Davis hit a triple into the right-field alley to drive both runners home before being sent home himself on a single by pinch hitter Daniel Murphy, and the Mets went ahead, 6-4.
Jose Reyes added a bases-loaded double in the bottom of the eighth to make the final score 8-4 and give the Mets a .500 record at 4-4.Francisco Rodriguez earned his first save of the season by getting the last four outs. He nipped a potential Nationals rally in the eighth by getting Matt Stairs to hit into an inning-ending groundout with two runners on base. In the ninth, Rodriguez walked the first two batters before getting Jayson Werth to hit into a double play. Ryan Zimmerman struck out swinging to end the game. (NY Times)
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