Category: Sports News

The Yankees broke an eighth-inning tie with a six-run frame that made the difference in Sunday's rubber game against the Mets, taking the first of the 2025 season's two three-game Subway Series matchups and feeding off the energy.

"It's fun playing at Yankee Stadium when it feels like it matters a lot," said Aaron Boone.

After Friday's 6-2 win, the Yankees bounced back from Saturday's 3-2 loss with a late-game breakthrough.

"I thought all three games were really good," Boone said. "Obviously, we came up winning two of 'em and rode a big inning tonight late. It felt like, either way, the whole time, I think clearly two really good teams having a little fun in May."

With the NL East-leading Mets (29-18) as the latest opponent, the Yankees (27-19) have won four consecutive series and hold a five-game lead in the AL East.

"I think anytime you win a series it's important," said Max Fried, who held the Mets to two runs on three hits while striking out eight and walking two in six innings. "Obviously, rivals and same city -- that sort of thing -- there's a little extra to it. But the series that feel like a playoff series are always good, especially earlier in the year -- it gets the juices going and preps you for the baseball you want to play towards the end."

The Yankees and Mets meet again July 4-6 at Citi Field with all three games scheduled to be on SNY.

"It's always fun playing the Subway Series," said Aaron Judge. "It doesn't matter what year it is. It's always going to be exciting. The fans always get into it. It's always back and forth, different chants -- the cheering, the booing, everything -- but two good ballclubs going after it."

The Subway Series didn’t quite go as planned for the Mets. 

They dropped two out of the three games in the Bronx with the latest one coming in ugly fashion -- as a Pete Alonso error in the bottom of the eighth led to the Yankees scoring six times to close out the series victory. 

The Mets were sloppy defensively. They scored just seven runs over the three games. Simply put, they were outplayed in almost every facet of the game.

But they can’t sit back and sulk over it because the road ahead doesn’t get any easier. 

The Mets head out to Boston for three games with the Red Sox starting on Monday before returning home to host Shohei Ohtani and the high-powered Dodgers for a three-game weekend set. 

“We’ll take it one day at a time,” Carlos Mendoza said. “We knew that this is a good team -- we didn’t get the job done and we lost the series. Now we have to get ready for another good team before we start thinking about what’s next. 

“That’s our mentality here, we have to turn the page -- I think we do a pretty good job of doing that. I’m pretty sure the guys will be ready to go tomorrow for a new series against a very good team in Boston.”

How can they turn things around? Alonso simply says by playing “clean quality baseball.”

“That’s really what it boils down to,” he said. “I think we did a good job of battling and putting together quality at-bats tonight and throughout the weekend, it’s just a matter of making plays and driving in a couple of runs when guys are on base.”

Taking the mound against Yankees ace Max Friedin Sunday night’s Subway Series finale, David Peterson gave the Mets the exact type of effort they were looking for.

The southpaw was hurt by his defense early, as the slow-footed Paul Goldschmidt reached on a Mark Vientos error leading off the bottom of the first, and then Cody Bellinger drove in the first two runs of the game after an Aaron Judge double. 

Peterson did well to settle in after that -- working around a leadoff single in the second and then a two out walk in the bottom of the third before putting together his first 1-2-3 frame of the night. 

The Yanks threatened again in the fifth, as three walks (one intentional to Judge) loaded the bases for Anthony Volpe, but the southpaw was able to bare down and got him to groundout to short to end the inning. 

Peterson then closed his night with a perfect bottom of the sixth -- giving him another quality start with a final line of two runs (one earned) on three hits while walking four and striking out four. 

“For him to go six there, going toe to toe with Max, that was important,” Carlos Mendoza said. “He kept us in the game, he kept getting groundballs -- we weren’t able to make the play in the first, but he mixed his pitches well against a good lineup and was good overall.”

The Mets let this one slip away with a six-run, eighth-inning meltdown.

Still, seeing Peterson put together another strong effort against this high-powered offense is an encouraging sign for the Mets. The former first-round pick has now allowed less than two earned runs in four consecutive outings, helping him bring his ERA down to 2.86 on the season.

“It was a good battle,” Peterson said. “It’s always fun going into these pitcher battles. Our offense grinded as much as they could and they put up a really good fight -- but overall, I felt good. I was on the same page as (Francisco Alvarez), and we have a really good game plan.”

The Mets were knotted in another close one with the Yankees. 

After David Peterson worked his way through six efficient innings, Huascar Brazoban entered and somehow danced his way out of a bases loaded jam in the bottom of the seventh to keep things evened at two a piece.

Ryne Stanek was handed the bottom of the eighth -- and things didn’t go as planned.  

The right-hander found himself in immediate danger as he issued a leadoff walk to Jasson Dominguez and then Austin Wells lined a one out double down the right-field line to put two in scoring position. 

Jorbit Vivas worked an 11-pitch at-bat before rolling one down to Pete Alonso. The big first baseman fielded the ball cleanly, but with the speedy Dominguez running on contact he uncorked a throw extremely wide of home, allowing the go-ahead run to score easily. 

After a pitching change, the Bombers were sure to make the Mets pay, as they tacked on five more runs with a Paul Goldschmidt single and Cody Bellingerthree-run homer to put this one away for good.

“I messed it up,” Alonso said. “I had the identical play (Saturday) where it was hit straight to me and it was a tag play at home, and I just made an awful throw. That whole inning, this game, it’s on me -- after that throw the momentum got out of hand. 

“It stinks because it’s the same play and I feel like that’s a play that I usually make and I can make pretty routinely, but I just had my feet set and didn’t get my fingers around the baseball and it sailed on me -- bad throw on me, this one is 100 percent on me.”

Alonso’s throw certainly was the biggest miscue of the game -- but he wasn’t alone in what was another poor defensive showing from the Mets.

Mark Vientos bobbled what should've been a routine groundball leading off the bottom of the first, allowing Goldschmidt to reach base safely -- and he scored just a few batters later on a Bellinger two-run single off of Alonso’s glove. 

And this is just the latest sloppy effort in what's quickly developing into an early season problem for New York -- Carlos Mendoza says it has to change. 

“We’ve been through some stretches where it’s been sharp,” the skipper said. “But also there’s been games where we’re not finishing plays or completing them, even some of the routine plays -- as we saw in the first inning tonight which led to a run.

“This is something that we have to get better at and we will because we have good defenders.”

Pete Alonso’s wild throw home allowed the Yankees to score the go-ahead run in the eighth inning of a ‘til-then taut game and the Yanks went on to win, 8-2, to take the first installment of this season’s Subway Series. 

With one out and runners on second and third and the score knotted at two, Jorbit Vivas smacked a hard grounder to Alonso at first and Jasson Dominguez broke from third base on contact. Alonso fielded the ball cleanly, but his throw was nowhere near the plate as Dominguez slid home.

It was the second error of the game for the Mets, who didn’t hit much, either. They had just three hits.

Alonso’s gaffe helped fuel a huge inning for the Yankees, who went on to score six times in the frame. Cody Bellingersmashed his ninth career grand slam and Paul Goldschmidt added an RBI single. 

The Yankees won two of three at Yankee Stadium over the weekend. Sunday’s game drew 48,028 fans, the biggest crowd at the Stadium so far this season.

The teams next meet in a three-game series at Citi Field beginning on the Fourth of July.

Here are some takeaways...

- The loss dropped the Mets (29-18) to below .500 on the road this season -- they are 12-13. The Yankees (27-19) are 15-9 at home. 

- Max Fried did not factor into the decision, but he gave the Yankees six very fine innings, allowing three hits and two runs. He struck out eight, walked two and threw 102 pitches. One highlight pitch -- he threw a tantalizing, 77-mile-per-hour curveball that flummoxed Juan Soto on a called strike three for the second out of the third inning. An indication of how good a season Fried is having -- his stingy outing actually raised his ERA from 1.11 to a still-sparkling 1.29. 

- David Peterson didn’t factor into the decision, either and he was just as effective as Fried, allowing two runs (one earned) and three hits over six frames. He walked four (one intentionally) and struck out fourth. He lowered his ERA from 3.05 to 2.86. 

- Defense, a facet of the game that David Stearns said was something the Mets could improve, bit them at the very beginning of the night. The Yankees took advantage of a Mark Vientos error, in part, to take a 2-0 lead in the first inning. Goldschmidt, the leadoff hitter, hit a grounder to third and Vientos bobbled it, putting a runner on first. One out later, Aaron Judge doubled to right and Bellinger followed with a double up the first-base line that plated two runs. Peterson got two ground balls to escape further damage, holding the Yanks two only a pair of runs, one of them unearned. It was the sixth error of the season for Vientos. 

- The Mets tied the score at two in the fifth inning, thanks to McNeil’s eye and legs. He worked an eight-pitch walk leading off, was sacrificed to second by Luisangel Acuña and went to third on a groundout by Francisco Lindor. When Fried bounced a pitch to Soto and it skipped away from Austin Wells, Jeff McNeil, who drove in the Mets' first run with an RBI single in the second, broke for the plate and scored on the wild pitch.

- Soto, who was a flashpoint player all weekend, made a fine running catch to end the fourth inning, racing back to snag a deep drive toward right-center by Wells. Wells’ smash was clocked at 99.8 miles per hour off the bat and had an expected batting average of .380.

- Mets manager Carlos Mendoza’s strategy impacted the Yankee fifth when he chose to intentionally walk Judge with a runner on second and two out and let Peterson pitch to Bellinger, a lefty-lefty matchup. Peterson walked Bellinger, but then got Anthony Volpe to ground out to short and the Yanks left the bases loaded. That was the first time Volpe made the final out of an inning with the bases loaded -- he struck out with the sacks full to end the seventh, too. 

- In the fateful eighth inning, relievers Ryne Stanek and Genesis Cabrera combined to allow six runs (three earned) and three hits. They threw a combined 50 pitches, 31 by Stanek.

Game MVP

Tough to choose anyone but Bellinger, who had six RBI total on the night and extended his hitting streak to 13 games by going 3-for-3 with two walks. He’s 20-for-53 (.377) during the streak with four homers and 12 RBI. His 13-game streak matched his career high.

Highlights

Jeff McNeil gets a run back for the Mets!

(via @ESPN) pic.twitter.com/EgqFT9Js09

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 18, 2025

"She's just over six months and she. Is. AWESOME! I'm loving every day of watching her grow up"

Brandon Nimmo on his daughter 🥹

(via @ESPN) pic.twitter.com/fUTUOKxxia

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 18, 2025

Juan Soto runs it down in the gap!

(via @ESPN) pic.twitter.com/im6x1x0LS7

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 19, 2025

The ball gets away from Austin Wells, Jeff McNeil comes home and the game is tied!

(via @ESPN) pic.twitter.com/x4SuG9KeEy

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 19, 2025

Francisco Lindor shared a laugh with Aaron Judge after Anthony Volpe grounded out 😅

(via @ESPN) pic.twitter.com/At6b5AtfNy

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 19, 2025

What's next

The Mets head to Boston to start a three-game set with the Red Sox on Monday at 6:45 p.m.

The Yankees have an off day before hosting the Texas Rangers for a three-game set on Tuesday at 7:05 p.m.

“Hey,” Starling Marte said to Juan Soto, grabbing him by both shoulders and forcing him to turn around. “This is what we do.”

It was the afternoon of May 1, and Soto had just hit his second home run of the game. He returned to the dugout, high-fived a few teammates, and appeared ready to move on with his day.

Marte, a smiling presence in a hoodie lurking behind Soto, saw the chance for a teaching moment. He nudged his younger teammate, then took hold of his upper body and spun him forward. Soto looked at the camera, flashing a pair of peace signs and a forced smile. Not good enough, not at Citi Field in the post-OMG era. Marte slapped Soto’s helmet; that induced a broad smile and ended the moment on high note.

“Whenever any of us hits a home run, we pose in front of the camera,” Marte said through an interpreter Sunday at Yankee Stadium. “When he hit that home run, he was about to just kind of go put his stuff back, and I pushed him. I said, ‘Hey, this is what we do.’ So now, if you ever see when he hits a home run, he's there posing.”

It was a small lesson, but indicative of the way that Marte has proven invaluable during Soto’s transition from the businesslike Yankees to the vibey Mets. Without fanfare, the veteran has devoted considerable time and energy into serving as an elder statesman to Soto and other young Mets.

“He’s a quiet leader,” says manager Carlos Mendoza. “He’s not going to go out of his way in front of people, but he will go out of his way when nobody sees it. That’s what makes him a special person. He’s very calm, and when he speaks -- man, people listen.”

Soto and Marte are both natives of the Dominican Republic and have known one another since Soto’s minor league days. When the Mets signed Soto, it meant pushing Marte, a two-time All-Star, into a job as a part-time designated hitter.

“I had to talk to him about his role,” Mendoza says. “We’re signing a player for the right field position, so you have to have that conversation right away. Right away, he understood. The first thing he said was, ‘I want to be a Met. I want to win with the Mets.’ That went a long way for me. After that it was, what can I do to help Juan?”

Says Marte: “Since we've known each other for a long time, I felt like it was my responsibility once he signed to try to make him feel more comfortable. Obviously, he's been on big-market teams and teams with a lot of guys before, but now he's new here, and a lot of us have been here together for quite a while.

“Maybe when he got here, he didn't feel as comfortable because he didn't have that same type of familiarity with all of us. So I took that responsibility to bring him into the group and try to make it feel more comfortable.”

Soto was not available for comment prior to Sunday’s game, but another of Marte’s acolytes, Mark Vientos, praised his leadership and ability to spot small advantages and tendencies within a game.

“He has helped me out a lot,” Vientos said. “He’s a team leader. It’s year fourteen for him, and he’s still at it with the same mentality. The game is super slow for him.”

Like Vientos, Soto is a young man who appreciates tough and honest mentorship. Unlike Vientos or anyone else in the game, he carries not only the largest contract in the history of American sports to his new job in Queens, but the weight of unfathomable expectations from a fan base whose very identity shifted after his arrival.

Folks in the organization believe that Soto has made significant progress settling in -- smiling more of late, and getting closer to the theatrical flow that has long made him the most exciting hitter in baseball.

“I see him talking to teammates all the time, sitting down with his teammates,” Marte said. “It's nice to see because that's what you want with a guy who's gonna be here for so long. I expect to see a lot more of that going on this year and for the next 15 years.”

On Friday night at Yankee Stadium, Soto even brought back a modified version of his famous shuffle, which has been missing for most of the season.

“I mean, it wasn't with too much swag,” Marte said with a smile. “I think once he starts to feel himself a little more, you're gonna start seeing it really coming out.”

Whenever it does, the team will know that Marte helped to bring it out -- and that Soto’s inevitable success as a Met will form part of Marte’s own legacy here, long after he is gone.

Andrew Friedman gave a longer answer Sunday morning when asked about the Dodgers’ recent — and, by the feel of it, familiar — pitching woes so far this year, the club’s president of baseball operations bemoaning another wave of injuries that has left the pitching staff shorthanded.

But the gist of his answer was in the two words he uttered at the start of his response.

“Not fun,” he said.

In the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss to the Angels later in the day, it became even less so.

Read more:Dodgers release Chris Taylor, parting ways with another veteran

As things currently stand, Tony Gonsolin is effectively the No. 2 pitcher in the Dodgers’ rotation, thrust into such a prominent role with Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki injured. But in a four-run, four-inning start, Gonsolin was derailed by his own physical issue, battling a bloody thumb in a three-run first inning that put the Dodgers behind the eight ball.

The Dodgers rallied, erasing what grew to a 4-0 deficit on Shohei Ohtani’s RBI single in the fifth and Will Smith’s tying three-run home run in the seventh. But then a banged-up bullpen gave the Angels the lead right back, with Travis d’Arnaud going deep in the eighth against Anthony Banda — himself forced into a high-leverage role lately, despite a disappointing start to the year, because of injuries to Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Kirby Yates (who became the latest pitcher to hit the injured list on Sunday with a hamstring strain he suffered the night before).

Friedman argued the Dodgers’ injury problems this year don’t compare to the dire straits they navigated en route to last year’s World Series title. Unlike then, the team hasn’t suffered any season-ending losses. In the big picture, they remain confident they’ll have enough depth to mount a title defense.

And yet, the team hasn’t discovered the secret to better health. Their rotation problems are giving the bullpen an unsustainably grueling workload. And figuring out how to better protect the club’s expensive stable of arms is “by far the No. 1 thing that keeps me up at night,” Friedman said.

“I mean, everything from my brain is about what we can do, like, how we can solve this,” Friedman added, the self-described “deep dive” the organization took into pitching injuries this offseason having yet to yield better results. “It's like a game of Whack-a-Mole, and things keep popping up. … The definition of enough depth, I think is a fool’s errand. I don't know what enough depth means. I think more is always better with pitching depth.”

But, with the team ranking 21st in the majors with a 4.18 team earned-run average, what they have currently certainly isn’t enough.

“It is what it is, I guess,” manager Dave Roberts said. “You just sort of have to deal with things as they come up.”

Gonsolin’s bloody thumb was the latest unexpected dilemma, arising when the pitcher picked at some dead skin on his thumb after his pregame warm-up and “took some good skin with it,” he said. “Just wouldn't stop bleeding."

After Gonsolin gave up a leadoff home run to Zach Neto on a sunny afternoon at Dodger Stadium, trainers came to the mound to check on his right throwing hand. As they examined him, applying a skin adhesive to address the problem, the television broadcast zoomed in on streaks of blood covering the backside of his pants.

While Gonsolin said he didn’t want to use his bloody thumb as an excuse, his struggle to command the baseball quickly became obvious. With one out, he walked Yoán Moncada, looking visibly uncomfortable as he sprayed the ball wide of the zone. In a 2-and-0 count to his next batter, Taylor Ward, Gonsolin threw a fastball over the heart of the plate. Ward crushed it for a two-run homer.

Read more:Clayton Kershaw shaky in his season debut as Angels take series win over Dodgers

“I just couldn't execute pitches,” said Gonsolin, whose 4.05 ERA still ranks second among the Dodgers’ current five-man rotation. “I'm not going to blame my thumb or whatever. Just didn't pitch good today."

Gonsolin did settle down from there, giving up just one more run the rest of the way. But his pitch count never got back under control, requiring 97 throws to get through four innings.

It was already the 14th time in 47 games that a Dodgers starter failed to work into the fifth, and left them with just 13 combined innings from their starters in this weekend’s series sweep by the Angels.

“We were fortunate to get him through four, but still, you know, with what we went through this series with the starters, there's a lot of innings our ‘pen had covered, and that's unfortunate,” Roberts said.

Indeed, all those short starts have had a cascading effect on the team’s relievers. And pitchers like Banda have had to compensate as a result.

Sunday’s outing marked Banda’s 21st appearance this season, becoming the fifth Dodgers reliever to reach that mark. Entering the day, no other team had more than three.

After pitching a clean seventh, Banda returned for the eighth and was bitten again by a common problem. In a 3-and-1 count against d’Arnaud, he threw a center-cut sinker that d’Arnaud crushed to left. It was Banda’s fifth home run given up, tying the total he allowed in 48 appearances over last season. It raised his ERA to 4.37, more than a run above his mark last season. 

“I think that there's a lot of sinkers that are not sinking, they're not commanded. He's getting into some bad counts. There's times where he's not landing his slider,” Roberts said of Banda’s struggles. “So I think it's just a compilation of things.”

And this time, the Dodgers couldn’t answer, suffering their first three-game Freeway Series sweep to the Angels since 2010, and first three-game sweep at home to anybody since 2023.

“I think, to be honest, we just didn't pitch well this series,” Roberts said.

Until the pitching staff gets healthy, it’s a shortcoming that will continue to threaten the Dodgers.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.