The Mets allowed 14 runs and still won. That is franchise history, and it is also the cleanest single-night summary of a $352 million Opening Day payroll that spent April digging an 11½-game hole and never climbed out.
Wednesday at loanDepot Park, New York built an 8-0 lead by the third inning, watched Miami erase it with three in the fourth and five in the sixth, answered with six in the seventh behind Francisco Lindor’s three-run shot, pushed the margin to 15-9, and then nearly handed the whole thing back. The Marlins scored two in the eighth and three in the ninth. Nate Lavender faced five hitters and retired one. Tobias Myers, the final arm left, put the tying and go-ahead runners on before striking out Owen Caissie and getting Graham Pauley on a popup. Final: 15-14. Mets 15 hits, Marlins 20. Combined 35. Game time 3:38. Attendance 10,955. First time the Mets have given up 14 and won the game.
Interim manager Andy Green called it football. “We got the two-point conversion on one of the touchdowns for the win,” he said. “It’s as crazy a game as you will see.” He also said the quieter part: “It was one of those days where it was tough to get anybody out.” And the organizational part: “Myers was the last guy we had in the pen today. I saved him because he had the most length available on the back side, and he was huge.”
Eleven Runs in Five Innings Is the Actual Story
The bullpen allowed 11 runs across five innings. That is the mechanism. Robert Stock gave the Mets four usable frames and three runs. Everything after that became a fire drill. Daniel Duarte got the win for 1⅔ innings and one run. Lavender’s 0.1 inning and three runs were his first allowed in the majors. Myers closed it because there was nobody else. Green did not manage a deep pen; he managed a last-man-standing problem on a night the bats went nuclear twice.
Look at the production that papered it over. Christopher Morel went 3-for-4 with a two-run homer (his first with the Mets after arriving in the deadline churn) and finished a triple shy of the cycle. Luis Torrens was 3-for-5 with four RBI. The bottom of the order roughly went 10-for-14 with 10 RBI. Lindor’s three-run homer in the seventh was the swing that made the second six-run inning stick long enough to matter. The Mets have now done two six-run innings in the same game five times in franchise history. On this night it was the only reason they left Florida with a sweep instead of a collapse for the highlight reels.
That offense is real in September. The pitching structure is not. A team that already traded eight players before the Aug. 3 deadline and fired Carlos Mendoza on June 26 does not suddenly discover relief depth in Miami in the second week of September. It discovers Myers as the last available body and hopes the lineup keeps scoring in double digits.
The 21-12 Stretch Does Not Rewrite the Payroll
The Mets are 68-78. They have won four straight and gone 21-12 since the deadline. Those numbers are true and they do not erase the Opening Day ledger. A major-league-high $352 million payroll produced an April 12-game losing streak, an 11½-game deficit by the end of the month, a midseason managerial change, and a seller’s deadline. The post-deadline stretch is what happens when the remaining pieces stop pretending this is still a contention roster and start playing loose. Lindor said the quiet part out loud after the game: “The vibes are good. Everybody is relying on each other. No one is trying to be the hero. Everybody’s just trying to contribute.”
Vibes do not fix a bullpen that can surrender 11 runs in five innings. Vibes do not change the fact that Miami, sitting at 72-75 and fading from the wild-card picture, put 20 hits on the board and still lost. Marlins manager Clayton McCullough saw the same fight from his side: “Nobody can question this group’s willingness to hang in there and fight until it’s done.” Both clubs kept swinging. Only one had the last arm left.
I keep coming back to the ledger Green described without meaning to. Last guy in the pen. Most length available. Saved him for the back side. That is how you manage a 15-14 win when the season already died in April. The Mets scored 15, allowed 14, and improved to 68-78 because the lineup refused to stop and the bullpen finally ran out of innings before it ran out of outs. History will file it as a wild win and a series sweep. The tape shows a $352 million construction that still cannot get anybody out when it has to.
Myers retired the last two. The Mets left the park with four straight. The payroll still sits there like an unpaid bill.
