As Jesse Winker walked to the plate as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 3-3 tie between the Mets and Baltimore Orioles, manager Carlos Mendoza wanted to see Winker “win this pitch,” whether that meant drawing a walk or doing anything he could to get on base.
As it turned out, Winker did his skipper one better.
Win this pitch? No.
Win the game.
Just like they did on Friday night, the Mets walked off with a win against Baltimore on Wednesday afternoon, with Winker’s longball giving the home team a 4-3 victory and a series win against a very good opponent.
“I just wanted to get on for [Francisco Lindor],” Winker said after the game. “Try to put an AB together, make [Seranthony] Dominguez’s job hard. And then as the at-bat went on, he missed on a couple of fastballs and a slider, and when I got to 3-2, ya know, just barrel it up. But the whole time it was crazy. I was just thinking about getting on first and you hit a ball out. It was kind of crazy. So I was happy it got up and got out.”
“I thought it was a line drive, maybe a double, but then that thing just kept on going,” said Mendoza. “So yeah, [he’s] a really good hitter, a big swing for us, for him, and we needed that.”
Acquired ahead of the trade deadline, Winker hadn’t really delivered a signature Mets moment, but that all changed on Wednesday, as his fist home run in a Mets uniform sent both the crowd, and Winker himself, into a full-on frenzy.
“It was a full blackout moment for me,” said Winker, who celebrated with his Mets teammates before even touching first base. “You just want to help any way that you can. I was just really happy.”
“He’s been hitting some balls hard and a couple of calls have probably not gone his way,” said Mendoza, “maybe it’s a ball that’s getting called a strike and he’s behind in counts. But the good thing is you know what you’re going to get out of him, and it’s a quality at-bat.
“It’s huge for him, it’s huge for our team. You had two guys who needed that. First it was [Francisco] Alvarez [on Friday] and now we’re looking at Winker today, because we’re going to need all of them, the 13 guys, position player-wise.”
As Winker’s home run sailed over the left-center field fence, it gave the Mets a winning 5-4 record on their homestand. Now, they hit the road for 10 games, starting with seven games against two teams in front of them in the NL Wild Card standings: the San Diego Padres and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
And while the home energy at Citi Field was electric during the Baltimore series, Mendoza knows his team will be ready to keep the momentum going as they hit the road.
“It feels like it’s a playoff game, the atmosphere, you know who you’re playing,” Mendoza said. “I said it before the series started, we’re not looking ahead, we just need to control the things that we need to control, one day at a time, one series at a time. We did that. We won a big series, and here were are getting ready for a West Coast trip. We’re playing another two really good teams, but we’ll take it the same way. We’ve got to concentrate on a good team in the Padres. They’re playing well, but we’ll be ready for it.”
Source Agencies
