Francisco Lindor’s grand slam headlines six-homer Mets rout of Yankees

Three innings, three statements

The shape of the game arrived quickly. Lindor opened the scoring with a first-inning homer to right, Luis Torrens followed with a two-run shot in the second, and Carson Benge added another in the third. By the time the Yankees looked up, the Mets had a 4-0 lead and Gerrit Cole had already been tagged for all three of the home runs he would allow. Cole’s final line — 4.1 innings, nine hits, five earned runs, three homers — tells the central story plainly enough: the Mets were not missing the mistakes they got.

What made the early surge more troublesome for the Yankees was the spread of the damage. Lindor finished 3-for-5 with five RBI, but he was hardly alone. Jared Young went 3-for-5 and homered, Soto had two hits and a home run, Benge had two hits and two RBI, and Torrens supplied both a homer and a double. Even Bo Bichette’s 0-for-5 did not slow the attack. This was a lineup night rather than a one-man show, and those are the hardest nights to survive when the ball starts leaving the yard.

The Yankees did manage a couple of replies, but the Mets kept placing an answer on top of each one. Cody Bellinger’s fourth-inning single brought home Paul Goldschmidt to make it 4-1, and Benge answered in the fifth with a run-scoring single that restored the four-run margin. Bellinger then homered in the sixth to trim it to 5-2, but that proved to be the end of the real chase. Zac Thornton worked seven innings for the Mets, allowing five hits, two runs and one walk on 81 pitches, and the Yankees never forced the kind of stress that would crack the game open for them.

Then Lindor turned the game sideways

If the Yankees still had a path in the seventh, Soto made it steeper with a 400-foot homer to right center. The eighth inning removed it altogether. Torrens doubled to left to score Marcus Semien and move A.J. Ewing to third, and the next blast was the one that made the scoreboard look absurd: Lindor drove a grand slam to right center, scoring Ewing, Torrens and Nick Morabito with himself. In one swing, a manageable 6-2 game became an 11-2 runaway.

Young added a solo homer in the ninth, and the final totals looked every bit as heavy as the innings felt: 14 hits, 34 total bases, a .350 average and a .850 slugging percentage for the Mets. Six home runs will always grab the eye, but the extra-base depth mattered too. Torrens’ eighth-inning double kept the line moving before Lindor finished it, and that is why the Mets’ attack read less like a string of isolated swings and more like pressure that kept renewing itself.

Our take: Why the Yankees never made the middle innings matter

The Yankees were not completely shut down; seven hits should give a club some room to work. But the rest of the line explains why two runs felt like the ceiling almost all afternoon. They drew only one walk, posted a .235 on-base percentage, hit into one double play and stranded 14 runners. That is a difficult combination to overcome against any staff, and especially against one that lived in the zone as efficiently as the Mets did. Thornton and Myers combined for 106 pitches, 80 of them strikes, and the Mets backed that with three double plays in the field.

The most obvious place for the Yankees to improve is in the quality of their plate pressure. Their 34 plate appearances consumed 106 pitches, or 3.12 per trip, while the Mets pushed the Yankees staff to 160 pitches over 42 plate appearances, or 3.81 each. That difference showed up everywhere: Thornton reached seven innings on 81 pitches, while the Yankees needed four pitchers to get through nine. Ryan Yarbrough’s 2.1 scoreless innings briefly stabilized the game, but the bullpen could not contain the late surge after that. Tim Hill allowed three runs in one inning, Bradley Hanner allowed four in 1.1 innings, and the Mets turned a respectable middle-game deficit into a blowout before the Yankees could reset.

Our take: Even a runaway leaves details to polish

This was, plainly, the kind of offensive performance that deserves admiration. Five different Mets homered, five different Mets had multiple hits, and the bottom of the order participated instead of merely surviving. Torrens drove in three, Young scored twice, Morabito reached and scored, and Ewing scored despite going hitless. That kind of depth is why a lineup can survive a quiet night from one regular and still end up with 12 runs.

If there is a nitpick for the Mets, it lives on the edges. They still left eight runners on base and were caught stealing once, so there were a few extra opportunities that went unused even in a game they controlled. On a day without six homers, those smaller leaks would matter more. Still, that is a small complaint beside the bigger truth from Saturday: the Mets paired a thunderous batting line with calm, efficient pitching, and the Yankees never found a way to make one side of that equation fail.

Scoring moments

1. 1st Inning

   Lindor homered to right (359 feet).

2. 2nd Inning

   Torrens homered to left (387 feet), Young scored.

3. 3rd Inning

   Benge homered to right center (368 feet).

4. 4th Inning

   Bellinger singled to right, Goldschmidt scored.

5. 5th Inning

   Benge singled to center, Soto scored.

6. 6th Inning

   Bellinger homered to right center (364 feet).

7. 7th Inning

   Soto homered to right center (400 feet).

8. 8th Inning

   Torrens doubled to left, Semien scored, Ewing to third.

9. 8th Inning

   Lindor homered to right center (365 feet), Ewing scored, Torrens scored and Morabito scored.

10. 9th Inning

    Young homered to right (365 feet).