NEW YORK (AP) — Starling Marte and Nick Plummer each homered and finished with four RBIs as the New York Mets rode an early offensive outburst to rout the Washington Nationals 13-5 on Monday night.
The top three batters in the Mets’ order — Luis Guillorme, Marte, and Francisco Lindor — combined to reach base in their first nine plate appearances, all of which occurred in the first three innings against Nationals starter Erick Fedde and reliever Andres Machado.
New York trailed 3-0 after a half-inning but led 12-4 after the fourth.
Lindor had RBI singles in the first and third. He has at least one RBI in each of the last eight games, the longest streak by a Mets player since Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado both had eight-game RBI streaks in June 2006.
Plummer’s RBI double delivered the first run of a four-run second when Guillorme had a run-scoring single and Marte hit his two-run homer. Marte added a two-run single in the third and Plummer — whose first career hit was a tying homer in the ninth inning of Sunday night’s 5-4, 10-inning win over Philadelphia — hit an opposite-field, three-run shot in the fourth.
Plummer finished a triple shy of the cycle in his second major league start.
Pete Alonso homered leading off the eighth for New York, which piled up 16 hits and matched their season-high for runs. Alonso has 30 RBIs in May — the eighth time in franchise history a player has recorded at least 30 in a month.
Every batter for the Mets reached base at least once except Jeff McNeil, who was 0 for 5 but hit into a run-scoring double play in the first inning to pull New York to 3-2.
Colin Holderman (2-0) earned the win with 1 1/3 innings of one-run ball in relief of David Peterson, who was pulled one out shy of qualifying for the win. Peterson was charged with four runs on six hits and four walks while striking out one and throwing just 44 of his 88 pitches for strikes.
Four straight Nationals reached base with one out in the first against Peterson, with Josh Bell hitting a two-run single before Lane Thomas extended the lead to 3-0 with a sacrifice fly.
Bell added an RBI single in the fifth and Cesar Hernandez had an RBI single in the sixth,
Fedde (3-4) allowed six runs and eight hits with no strikeouts in 1 1/3 innings — the most runs given up by a Nationals pitcher in 1 1/3 innings or fewer since Fedde was charged with six runs while getting the first four outs of a 24-8 loss to San Diego last July 16.
