The New York Mets defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in extra innings for the second straight day on Sunday at Citizens Bank Park.
The Mets came out to play the fourth game of their five game series against the Phillies after their previous two games had gone 14 innings each. Both teams would need their starting pitchers to have big games with their bullpens running on fumes.
Jonathan Niese of the Mets and Cole Hamels of the Phillies did just that, with both pitchers going deep in to the game. Niese pitched a gem, going eight innings and giving up two runs on eight hits. His lone mistake was giving up a two run homerun to slugger Ryan Howard in 4th inning, his second homerun in as many days.
Hamels lasted seven innings, throwing 125 pitches and only allowing six hits. The Mets were able to manufacture a run in the 4th inning by heads-up base running from David Wright, who was able to score on a sacrifice fly hit in foul territory off the bat of Chris Young. The Mets would tie the game in the 6th with help from some shoddy Phillie’s defense. The struggling Curtis Granderson hit a sacrifice fly to score Eric Campbell, who was on third base thanks to a Jimmy Rollins throwing error.
The star of the game would be Lucas Duda, who started the game on the bench but came up clutch in the 11th inning when he crushed a two run homerun off of Phillies reliever Phillippe Aumont. You can see more from MLB.com, on Duda’s game-sealing homerun.
Newly named closer, Jenrry Mejia came in to close the game in the bottom of the 11th, with a 4 to 2 lead to work with. Despite giving up a solo homerun to former Met, Marlon Byrd, the energetic reliever was able to get his 6th save in as many chances.
The victory did not come without a price. Centerfielder Juan Lagares left the game in the 10th inning, with what ESPN, is calling a painful rib cage. The talented second year player from the Dominican Republic is third on the team in hits with 45.
The Mets have now won three of the first four games of the series, with the finale tonight at 7:05 p.m. The Mets will send veteran Bartolo Colon to the mound, who is coming off of his best performance of the season, when he held the Pirates scoreless through seven and a third innings. The last place Phillies will try to salvage something from the series with Roberto Hernandez pitching, who has been used as both a reliever and starter at times this season.