All season, fans heeded the calls of the team and the owners, packing Citi Field to see what they hoped would be winning baseball. For the most part, the Mets have given those fans a show at home, but there has been tremendous frustration among the fanbase over the last few months as the Amazins’ have looked anything but.
The Mets had to contend with an NFL Sunday, kids going back to school and waning fan interest in a team that lost eight straight coming into the series finale against the Texas Rangers. Those who showed up to Citi Field on Sunday to see the third game of a series that has been eventful, yet frustrating, finally got something to cheer about when Pete Alonso hit a walk-off bomb to give the Mets a 5-2 win.
“He’s powerful,” manager Carlos Mendoza said of his first baseman. “All he’s got to do is just touch it, pretty much, in those situations and the ball is going to go.”
Considering the fact that no Mets team has ever had a losing streak of nine games or longer and still managed to make the playoffs, they needed this win.
“We need them all at this point,” Alonso said. “Whether it’s today, tomorrow, or however many games we have left, we need as many as we can. We’ve just got to do the best we can to stack them.”
With two on and none out in the bottom of the 10th, Alonso teed off on right-hander Luis Curvelo (1-1), sending a 1-1 sinker the other way over the right field fence for his 34th of the season. Ryne Stanek (4-6) pitched a scoreless top inning to keep the game tied at 2-2.
Nolan McLean tossed six shutout innings, holding the Rangers to only five hits and two walks while striking out seven. The rookie right-hander now has a 1.19 ERA, the lowest in club history for a player through his first six starts. A 2-0 lead was intact when McLean left the game, but the bullpen gave it away in the seventh.
Left-hander Brooks Raley put two on and got two outs before handing the ball over to right-hander Reed Garrett to face No. 2 hitter Wyatt Langford. Garrett walked him to load the bases for Joc Pederson, who proceeded to line the second pitch he saw from Garrett to right field for a two-run, game-tying single.
Pushing the first run across was hard enough for the Mets. Francisco Alvarez doubled to start the fifth against left-hander Jacob Latz, and advanced to third on a ground ball by leadoff hitter Francisco Lindor. Juan Soto hit a grounder to Rowdy Tellez at first base. Alvarez saw where Tellez was playing, and broke for home after the first baseman tagged the bag for the second out. He slid in head-first, just before catcher Kyle Higashioka could get the tag down.
The Mets’ No. 1 catcher, Alvarez is currently playing with a broken pinky on one hand and a sprained thumb UCL on the other. Sliding headfirst with the possibility of further aggravation to one of those injuries just about gives Mendoza a heart attack, but Alvarez has no hesitation.
“Not really, no, I don’t think about it,” Alvarez said. “I’m just going to play. I don’t want to think, ‘Oh, what if I hurt myself? What if something happens?’ I don’t think about that, I just play to win the game.”
It was a play that showed exactly how much Alvarez and the rest of the team wanted to win.
“It was a hell of a read there,” Mendoza said. “He wasn’t going on contact, so for him to recognize that the first baseman was playing a little deeper and kind of took a chance to step on the base, that’s when he kind of took off. An impressive slide there, you know, but I kind of played breath there. Then you see the reaction, you see the intensity, how fired up he got the guys in the dugout. That’s what you want to see.”
Brandon Nimmo made it 2-0 in the sixth with a solo home run off right-hander Cole Winn, but the lead wouldn’t last.
The Rangers (79-71) finally relinquished the momentum in the ninth.
In the top of the inning pinch-runner Ezequiel Duran swiped second base, with Lindor protesting that he came off the bag. The call on the field stood, but the Mets got the last laugh, doubling Duran off third after Lindor nabbed a low liner by Josh Smith for the double play. The Mets were fired up coming off the field.
“I feel like those are some of the little breaks that we were not getting, or we were on the other side of [in recent weeks],” Mendoza said. “A soft line drive and we’re able to get that runner at third base. That’s what you need, that little break right there. It gets the guys going and when we got back in the dugout, the momentum kind of shifted there.”
The win was enough to give the Mets (77-73) a 1/2 game back in the NL Wild Card standings, and they now lead the San Francisco Giants by 1.0 game, and the Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds by 2.0.
https://www.courant.com/2025/09/14/pete-alonso-walk-off-mets-rangers/
