For a second straight night, the Mets had a one-run lead heading into the bottom of the ninth at Dodger Stadium, and for the second straight night, the defending champions sent it to extras.
Max Muncy hit two home runs, including the tying shot in the ninth inning, and Freddie Freeman walked it off with a double in the 10th to lift the Dodgers to a 6-5 win over the Mets on Tuesday night to tie the four-game set up after New York (38-23) pulled out an extra-inning win on Monday.
After Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott struck out Juan Soto and Pete Alonso before getting Brandon Nimmo to ground out in the top of the 10th, Mets reliever Jose Butto walked Shohei Ohtani and got Mookie Betts to line out to bring up Freeman. The star first baseman lofted a slicing fly ball to left field, which Nimmo could not track, as it bounced off the wall and brought home ghost runner Tommy Edman for the game-winner.
“It acted a little bit differently than I’m used to,” Nimmo said, describing what happened as he got turned around while tracking the ball. “It’s unfortunate, would have loved to have made that play. Two outs and get out of there. Sometimes, the ball doesn’t go the way you think… I had a read on it, as long as it was staying in the park, I had a play on it. I knew we had to get back quick because we were playing for the base hit. I thought I was going to be able to make a play on it. It just did what I didn’t think it was going to do there at the end. I have a lot of years of experience that tells me the reaction of these things, and that was out of my reaction. I was very surprised to find it on the other shoulder. Very unfortunate time for that to happen.”
The Mets managed to score five unanswered runs to hold that late one-run lead. Muncy’s first home run of the game, a two-run shot, headlined Los Angeles’ four-run first inning off Tylor Megill, who managed to bounce back, go six innings, and allow nothing more.
Soto hit a two-run shot for his third home run in the last four games to cut the Mets’ deficit to 4-3 in the third. Alonso tied it on an RBI double in the fifth, and came in to score when Nimmo beat out a grounder to first.
