NEW YORK — In the clubhouse after the game, Jesse Winker couldn’t break down any part of the celebration. Not the helmet slam halfway down the first-base line, not the way he took his elbow guard off before touching first base, not the slow high fives he gave as he approached home nor the two-footed leap onto the plate that punctuated the Mets’ biggest win of the season, so far.
“Full blackout,” Winker said. “It was kind of crazy.”
Winker’s first home run as a Met might be their most important of the season: a pinch-hit, walk-off shot to left-center off Seranthony Dominguez to beat the Orioles, 4-3, on Wednesday.
“Huge. You could see it in the way guys celebrated,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Huge for us, especially winning two games the way we did against a really good team. We were able to find a way.”
“It’s what you play for,” Winker said. “You just want to help the team any way you can.”
JESSE WINKER THE MAN THAT YOU ARE 👋 pic.twitter.com/dDTBoRYzCK
— New York Mets (@Mets) August 21, 2024
Through all their ups and downs this season, the Mets have remained steadfast in playing the season one game at a time, in refusing to assign added significance to any contest before the fact. A win’s a win, a loss is a loss, they all count the same in the standings on the agate page.
But even ahead of Wednesday’s matinee, they conceded this one meant a little more. It was the rubber game of the series, the rubber game of the homestand. The Mets had split the first two with the Orioles and the first eight of this stretch in Queens. A cross-country flight to San Diego awaited them postgame, their mood for those six hours dependent on the final innings.
“Where we are on the schedule, having an opportunity to win a series against a really good team, it’s important,” Mendoza said before the game.
That importance only magnified as the game played out, especially from the sixth inning on. New York had been in control behind Sean Manaea, who retired the first 17 Orioles, eight by strikeout.
Manaea had emerged as the Mets’ best and most consistent starter over the last month by trimming down his repertoire to mainly his two different fastballs and his slower sweeper as a breaking ball. On Wednesday, he deployed the changeup he’s reworked over the last few weeks, mixing it in comfortably to keep Baltimore off balance.
But Manaea stumbled in the sixth. He hit the 18th Baltimore batter, Jackson Holliday, to end his perfect game, and the 19th batter, Austin Slater, ended the no-hitter, the shutout and the Mets’ two-run lead.
Slater’s two-run homer to right was the first pivot point of several down the stretch.
Mark Vientos put the Mets back ahead with a solo shot off Craig Kimbrel in the seventh. In the next half-inning, the O’s loaded the bases with nobody out against José Buttó, in part thanks to a missed strike call that negated a strike-him-out, throw-him-out double play. Buttó gathered himself, with the help of another borderline call that went his way, to hold the Orioles to a single run to tie the game.
That’s when Winker stepped to the plate against Dominguez, who’d surrendered Francisco Alvarez’s walk-off homer two nights ago. Winker’s first month with the Mets hasn’t been his best. Despite some hard contact off the bat, his OPS was barely above .600. Pinch-hitting for Harrison Bader, he fell behind 0-2 before working the count back full. On a 99 mph Dominguez heater down, Winker stayed with the pitch and flicked it to left-center. It looked like extra bases off the bat; it ended as jubilation.
“That thing just kept going,” Mendoza said.
That’s the plan for the Mets now, too. To just keep going, to keep finding a way, to get themselves back into playoff position now with a road trip through San Diego and Arizona. The flight west just got a whole lot smoother.
“They’re hungry, they’re relentless,” Mendoza said of his team. “That’s what it’s all about.”
(Photo of Jesse Winker: Mary DeCicco / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
