NEW YORK — These days, the alleged dog days, against good teams and bad, in games with heightened importance to the postseason race and throwaway midweek series, no matter the quality of the opposing starting pitcher, the Mets have turned the diamond at Citi Field into their own personal merry-go-around.
Hit-by-pitch, walk, single, sacrifice fly — boom, two runs in the first inning. Walk, single, steal, single, single, single — bam, three more runs in the second.
On and on they went Wednesday in a 10-2 victory over the Reds, the Mets’ sixth win in a row, eighth in nine games and 15th in 17 games.
They have averaged 5.63 runs per game since the All-Star break. That is up from an already strong 4.70 in the first half of the season.
In addition to the usual suspects like Pete Alonso (3-for-5, RBI) and Francisco Lindor (2-for-3, two RBIs, three runs scored), the Mets’ trade-deadline additions had big impacts again. Daniel Vogelbach drove in three runs and scored another, and Tyler Naquin added a homer and a double.
It helped, of course, that their primary victim this time was righthander T.J. Zeuch, a 27-year-old rookie making his season debut. The first red flag popped up in the first inning, when Zeuch got ahead of Brandon Nimmo, 0-and-2, but wound up hitting him with a full-count pitch. Zeuch threw more pitches to his first batter (seven) than Taijuan Walker threw in the first inning (six).
The Mets scored twice in that opening inning, on Alonso’s single (for RBI No. 96) and Jeff McNeil’s sacrifice fly. The latter brought in Lindor, who matched 2008 David Wright’s franchise record by scoring a run in 13 consecutive games.
By the time the Mets scored thrice more in the second — two on Lindor’s single, one on Vogelbach’s single — the game was basically over.
Walker (10-3) allowed two runs in six innings, scattering five hits and three walks while striking out five. That was a significant rebound from his previous outing, when he allowed Atlanta eight runs and recorded only three outs.
