NEW YORK — Pete Alonso hit a three-run walk-off home run off Luis Curvelo, and the New York Mets stopped an eight-game losing streak with a 5-2 victory against the Texas Rangers on Sunday.
New York reopened a 1½-game lead over San Francisco for the last National League wild-card spot.
“We need them all at this point,” Alonso told reporters after the game. “No matter whether it’s today, tomorrow or however many games we have left, we need as many games as we can. We’ve just got to do the best we can to stack ’em.”
With the score tied 2-2, Alonso hit an opposite-field homer to right off Curvelo (1-1), then saluted the Mets’ dugout and tossed his helmet before reaching first base. As he rounded third, Alonso began untucking his shirt before he sprinted across the plate and was doused with popcorn by jubilant teammates. He ended the Mets’ longest losing streak since 2018, raising his season totals to 34 homers and 117 RBIs.
“Sick,” Alonso said of the scene. “… For us, there was never a doubt the entire day.”
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Said reliever Ryne Stanek, who earned the victory: “That win felt like a deep breath.”
The Mets backed rookie Nolan McLean with a 2-0 lead only for the Rangers’ Joc Pederson to tie the score with a two-run single in the seventh off Reed Garrett.
That set the stage for Alonso’s fifth career walk-off home run.
“He’s powerful,” manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters. “All he’s got to do is just tough it pretty much in those situations, and the ball’s going to go.”
Texas had won six straight games and began the day two games back in both the American League West and for the final AL wild card.
Making his sixth big league start, McLean gave up five hits, struck out seven and walked two, lowering his ERA to 1.19 — the lowest by a Mets pitcher through his first six starts.
Francisco Alvarez raced home from third on Juan Soto’s fifth-inning groundout off starter Jacob Latz, and Brandon Nimmo homered leading off the sixth for the Mets.
“Winning that one right there feels like it will quell some of the outside noise — the noise that’s not coming from in here,” Stanek told reporters. “I feel like we have a really good group that’s mature, that’s veteran, that’s not going to take the noise and magnify it. But if winning today — if that can kind of drown out some of that noise anyway, it’s always a good thing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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