Francisco Lindor opened the fifth anniversary of his three-homer night against the Yankees with a leadoff shot to right, then closed the argument with a grand slam in the eighth. Five RBI. Two homers. Mets 12, Yankees 2. Six long balls in one Subway Series night at Yankee Stadium. I am not here to split hairs about a September scoreboard. I am here to convict.
Gerrit Cole walked to that mound as the supposed ace of a club sitting on an 85-63 record and a magic number of two. He left after 4.1 innings, nine hits, five runs, three homers, and another entry in a ledger that now reads like a horror story every time the Mets show up. Zero walks. Four strikeouts. No command of the moment. The Yankees’ four-game winning streak died on impact. Their clinch stayed on hold. A sellout of 46,864 watched the whole thing unfold in 2 hours and 37 minutes, and plenty of them headed for the exits once Lindor cleared the bases.
I have watched this rivalry long enough to know when a pitcher is simply allergic to a lineup. Cole is now 0-3 with a 10.92 ERA and ten home runs allowed across his last three Subway Series starts. Career line against the Mets: 17 homers in ten starts. Seventeen. That is not a blip. That is a pattern that should keep Aaron Boone awake until the postseason starts. Cody Bellinger supplied both Yankee runs with an RBI single and a solo shot. Everyone else looked lost against a Mets rookie named Zac Thornton who retired the first nine hitters he faced and went seven innings for the win.
Lindor Did Not Just Homers. He Issued a Verdict.
Lindor finished 3-for-5. The leadoff blast was his fifth of the season from the top spot and the 36th of his career. The grand slam was the eighth of his career and pushed the Mets to 11-2 before Jared Young tacked on one more in the ninth. This was Lindor’s 24th multi-homer game. He has seven homers in his last twelve games. On the exact calendar date he once torched these same Yankees for three at Citi Field, he walked into the Bronx and reminded everyone who owns these nights.
After the game he said what the box score already proved. “It’s been an uphill fight this year… It just sucks that we haven’t played as much together. But when we do play together and we are all in the same lineup, this is what we should have been doing since the beginning.” That is the Mets season in two sentences. Injuries scattered them. Lindor missed roughly two months with a calf strain. The full group never got a clean run until the calendar forced it. Now they are 22-13 since the August 3 deadline, sitting at 69-79 overall and still finding ways to embarrass the team across town.
He gave Cole his due and then took it right back. “He’s one of the best pitchers in the game… We have a crazy amount of respect for him, but he made a couple of mistakes.” A couple of mistakes turned into three home runs and a night the Yankees will replay in their heads when October pressure arrives. Luis Torrens went deep. Carson Benge went deep and then knocked Cole out with an RBI single. Juan Soto, the former Yankee still drawing boos in the Bronx, deposited his 25th of the year roughly 400 feet away. Young finished the demolition. Six home runs against a Yankees staff that is supposed to be playoff-ready. First time the Mets have ever done that to them.
The Magic Number Stayed Stuck for a Reason
I keep coming back to the delayed clinch. The Yankees entered the night needing two wins or the right combination of results to punch their ticket for the ninth time in ten seasons. Instead they got carved up by a Mets club that has no October plans and zero interest in soft landings. Thornton’s ERA sits at 3.44 after that outing. The Mets scored in every inning except the fourth and sixth. Fourteen hits. Absolute control.
Lindor again: “It’s unfortunate we didn’t play together from the beginning of the year. A lot of us were hurt, but now we’re making the most out of it.” That is the only honest framing left. The Mets are not contenders. They are a group finally healthy enough to show what the original blueprint looked like, and they chose the Yankees as the stage. Soto in orange and blue. Lindor one home run shy of 300 for his career. A rookie starter carving through a lineup that just snapped its own streak the hard way.
Yankees fans can rage about Cole’s Subway Series ledger all they want. The numbers are already in the books. Seventeen homers allowed to this franchise across ten starts. Ten of them in the last three meetings alone. Boone can talk about process and readiness until the buses roll to the first round. The tape from Saturday shows a staff that got punched in the mouth by a last-place-adjacent club that refused to play small.
The series finale still sat on the schedule for Sunday. The Mets already had their statement. Lindor already had his anniversary encore. Twelve to two is the kind of score that lives in the rivalry longer than any single clinch date. Cole handed it over. Thornton locked it down. And Francisco Lindor, on the same September date he once owned five years earlier, walked into the Bronx and wrote the final paragraph himself.
