Sweeping their most recent series with the Washington Nationals wasn’t enough. The New York Mets keep on winning, this time blasting their way through the Miami Marlins (12-1) to grap the top spot in the NL East, while their rivals for the division title keep on losing.
The Mets had a rough, 4 a.m. arrival in Miami, but that didn’t get in their way. A home run from rookie Michael Conforto, three doubles from Yoenis Cespedes and two for Travis d’Arnaud completed an impressive batch of extra base hitting, with Cespedes picking up four RBIs and Conforto actually starting it all with his three-run homer.
Bartolo Colon didn’t get into too much trouble on the mound, picking up his 10th win of the season (10-10), striking out five and giving up seven hits in his eight innings of pitching. Sean Gilmartin came on for him to finish the game, not allowing the Marlins any chance of improving their poor scoring output.
With the win, the Mets make it four in a row and improve to 56-50, giving them a one game advantage over the Nationals in the NL East, who are suddenly three games behind in the Wild Card standing as well. We still have some time before the season is over, but it doesn’t look like the NL East will be sending a team to the Wild Card game. Right now it looks more like a NL Central (Pirates, Cubs) and NL West (Giants) thing.
The Nationals, after losing three days in a row to the Mets, had a hard time figuring out Zack Godley of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who struck out six in six innings while allowing only three hits, improving to 3-0 this season with a 1.50 ERA, not allowing a run. Doug Fister was poor in his six innings, giving up eight hits and five runs, with the Nationals scoring some runs in the end to make it look a bit closer than it was during the game, eventually losing 6-4.
Bryce Harper was quite angry at the end of the day, claiming he doesn’t care about the other teams, only paying attention to what the Nationals are doing. While thats’ a fine strategy, caring about the Mets does make some kind of sense, seeing as they’re in his division and all.