Sean Manaea gave the Mets exactly what they needed Sunday in Pittsburgh: a shutdown start, a pile of strikeouts and a game that never felt close once New York got rolling.
The Mets rolled past the Pirates 11-1, and the win kept their post-deadline surge going. New York is 5-1 since the deadline selloff and has now taken back-to-back road series against playoff hopefuls, first the Guardians and now the Pirates.
Manaea was the headliner. He turned in his fourth straight quality start, struck out a season-high 11, walked none and allowed just three hits.
The 11 strikeouts matched his best mark in a Mets uniform. He looked sharp from the jump, fanning five Pirates hitters over the first two innings, which tied a career best.
His fastball sat in the low to mid 90s, and he kept piling up empty swings until Jake Mangum finally got Pittsburgh on the board with a solo homer in the third.
By then, the Mets had already built a comfortable lead and never let up. New York scored in four of the first five innings and got RBIs from six different players.
Bo Bichette reached base six times, Jared Young collected three hits, and Luis Robert Jr. and Francisco Alvarez both went deep. The Mets have now scored 42 runs on the road trip.
The first inning set the tone against Jared Jones. AJ Ewing opened the game with a seven-pitch walk, Francisco Lindor was hit by a pitch, and Bichette smoked a 110.9 mph single up the middle to load the bases.
That brought up Carson Benge, who had missed Saturday with a bruised wrist but came right back with a check-swing single that scored Ewing. Robert Jr. followed with a sacrifice fly to bring home Lindor, and just like that the Mets were up 2-0 before Manaea even threw a pitch.
They kept adding on in the third. Robert Jr. launched a two-run homer, Young followed with a two-out triple - his second triple of the road trip - and Marcus Semien singled him home as Jones’ afternoon kept unraveling.
The fourth inning was the knockout blow. Jones hit Alvarez with a pitch, then walked Ewing and Lindor.
Evan Sisk came in, but the damage kept coming. With the bases loaded and nobody out, Bichette lined a double to left to clear the bases.
Young then drove in Bichette, pushing the Mets to a 9-1 lead.
Alvarez eventually answered the hit by pitch the hard way, crushing a solo homer in the fifth. That blast gave the Mets double-digit runs for the 12th time this season. Bichette and Robert Jr. added more in the seventh, with Bichette doubling to left and Robert Jr. driving in his fourth run of the day on a two-out single.
Bichette finished 5-for-5 with two doubles, and every Mets hitter reached base at least once except Brett Baty, who went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts.
The final innings also brought a notable moment for the bullpen. Jack Weisenburger made his MLB debut in the eighth after getting the call earlier in the day, then tossed two shutout innings to finish off the blowout. His work, along with Manaea’s, helped interim manager Andy Green keep the bullpen in shape for the three-game series in Atlanta.
That series begins Monday at 7:15 PM EDT, with Christian Scott starting for the Mets and Bryce Elder going for Atlanta.
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For the Mets, the jolt is less about one transaction than the larger question of whether there was more to keep there when they let him go. Milwaukees willingness to add Bae says something about the leagues appetite for depth and upside, especially with roster needs shifting from week to week. His season has been largely spent in the minors, but his quick reappearance in a big-league conversation is the kind of detail that can make a release look a little different in hindsight. [Read more 🡒]