Pete Alonso is breaking out — and refusing to give up on the New York Mets.
The Mets will look to ensure themselves a series win Saturday night when they host the Washington Nationals in the third game of a four-game set. New York has won the first two games.
Right-hander Carlos Carrasco (3-4, 5.82 ERA) is slated to start for the Mets against left-hander Patrick Corbin (6-11, 5.01).
Alonso drove in all of the Mets’ runs on Friday night, when he homered twice in a 5-1 win.
The two-homer, five-RBI game was Alonso’s second of the week. He had a three-run homer, a solo shot and an RBI single in the Mets’ 9-3 win over the New York Yankees on Tuesday night.
In between, the Mets began the process of selling before the trade deadline by dealing David Robertson — who had a team-high 14 saves — to the Miami Marlins in exchange for teenage prospects Ronald Hernandez and Marco Vargas.
The Mets are 49-54 and 6 1/2 games out of the third wild-card spot in the NL, with several teams they would have to pass along the way.
“I know that there’s a lot of hubbub and buzz around the trade deadline and rightly so,” said Alonso, who hit .174 with six homers in the 38 games prior to his two-homer outburst against the Yankees. “There’s teams making moves, and that’s a big deal in the industry of baseball.
“But also, it doesn’t matter where people go. Our job remains the same, no matter who’s in this locker room. Our job’s to compete and do whatever we can to win with whatever we have that day — or whoever we have that day.
“We’re going to keep fighting. The season doesn’t end at the trade deadline. The season ends Oct. 1. And that’s a huge message that we’ve been relaying to each other.”
Alonso’s first homer on Friday came in the fifth inning. Washington starter MacKenzie Gore walked Brett Baty and Francisco Alvarez, then retired Brandon Nimmo and Francisco Lindor on flyouts before Alonso hit a 453-foot bomb to left-center.
The homer ended a tightrope act for Gore, who threw a first-pitch ball to 16 of 23 batters. In contrast, he entered Friday with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 15-to-4 over his previous three starts.
“The walks were bad,” Gore said. “It’s just frustrating, because we had done a better job of that lately, at least getting ahead of guys. And then today, even the innings before, it wasn’t great. It’s just frustrating.”
Carrasco took a loss in his latest start when he gave up five runs on a season-high 10 hits over a season-low 2 1/3 innings as the Mets fell 6-1 to the host Boston Red Sox on Sunday. He is 2-2 with a 3.94 ERA in eight career games (seven starts) against the Nationals.
Corbin took a defeat Monday after allowing six runs (five earned) on 10 hits in 6 1/3 innings during the Nationals’ 10-6 loss to the visiting Colorado Rockies. He is 7-10 with a 4.41 ERA in 26 games (25 starts) against the Mets.
Corbin beat New York on May 15 after yielding two runs on eight hits in six innings. He struck out one and walked one in a 10-3 home victory.
–Field Level Media
