During a dreadful month of April, it felt like whenever the Mets fell into an early deficit, the game was over.
Of late though, they’ve started to show more fight.
We saw it as they battled to take the series opener in extras last weekend in Arizona, and then in all three games of the homestand-opening set with the Detroit Tigers.
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For just the third time in franchise history, New York came back from multiple runs down in each of the matchups as they locked of their first series sweep of the season.
“It’s great to see,” Carlos Mendoza said following Thursday’s victory.
New York fell behind 2-0 in the top of the second on Tuesday night before they rattled off 10 unanswered runs, sparked by a spectacular big-league debut from top prospect A.J. Ewing.
They came from behind again on Wednesday night after Detroit was spotted a pair of runs in the first, eventually winning it in the bottom of the 10th on Carson Benge’s first career walk-off hit.
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And then on Thursday afternoon the offense homered five times and Nolan McLean put forward his gutsiest outing thus far, battling through seven innings of work despite not having his best stuff.
Overall, it was one of the Mets’ most complete showings to this point in the season.
“During that tough stretch it felt like every time we got down a couple of runs the game was over,” Mendoza said. “Now we’re down three runs in the first inning and you still feel good out there — you can just sense it in the dugout.
“The pitching is going to keep us in games, they’ve done it all year — it’s good to see the guys fight back — they’re resilient. They aren’t going to give up, they aren’t going to put their heads down, they are just going to keep going.”
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Even with the majority of their regulars in the starting lineup sidelined to injuries, the Mets have now won three of their first four series and eight of their first 12 games to open the month of May.
They’ll look to keep rolling this weekend against the struggling Yankees in the Subway Series.
“We just have to do it one day at a time,” Mendoza emphasized. “We can’t get too far ahead of ourselves — you enjoy today, but then you have to come back tomorrow, understanding you have a really good team coming to town.
“It’s going to take a consistent, good brand baseball, executing and just playing our best at the highest level — I’m confident with the personnel that we have in there that we’re going to be able to do that.”
