Juan Soto hit his 21st home run of the season, leading the New York Mets to a 6-5 win over the New York Yankees on Friday. The Yankees have lost five straight games and six of their past seven.
Jasson Domínguez and Aaron Judge led off the game with back-to-back home runs to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead against Mets rookie Justin Hagenman. Judge hit his 32nd homer of the season, yet still trails the Seattle Mariners‘ Cal Raleigh, who hit two on Friday to extend his MLB lead with 35.
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The Mets answered in the bottom of the first inning on Soto’s two-run shot off Yankees starter Marcus Stroman. Making his second start since returning from the injured list, Stroman allowed three runs and seven hits in five innings with four strikeouts.
Pete Alonso put the Mets on top, 3-2, with an RBI single in the third inning. But the Yankees responded in the fourth with Cody Bellinger‘s 13th home run of the season, yanking a low, inside cutter from Hagenman into the right-field upper deck.
Domínguez gave the Yankees a 5-3 lead in the fifth with his second homer of the game, launching a two-run shot off reliever Austin Warren. However, the Mets chipped away at their deficit one inning later with a Brett Baty homer off Ian Hamilton.
That set up Jeff McNeil for some game-winning heroics in the seventh. Luke Weaver took over with two outs in the inning, but walked Alonso on six pitches. McNeil followed with his own six-pitch at-bat, turning on a changeup low and in for an upper deck homer and a 6-5 lead.
Weaver has allowed two runs in three consecutive outings.
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“I said I’ve been feeling good, that just might be a lie now, I don’t know,” said the Yankees’ former closer. “It’s hard to make sense of what’s going on”
McNeil clinched the win with his glove in the ninth, getting two consecutive groundballs at second base to close out the game. He got the second out of the inning with a diving stop on what looked like a base hit from DJ LeMahieu.
“When that ball hit my glove, I said ‘Oh s***, it’s in my glove,'” McNeil told reporters afterward. “I knew it was a big play because I knew Judge was up fourth that inning. We don’t want him coming to the plate and that’s why I was so excited about that one.”
Judge was indeed left standing in the on-deck circle after Dominguez’s game-ending groundout.
For the Yankees, the defeat follows getting swept in a four-game series versus the Toronto Blue Jays that knocked them out of first place in the AL East. The Yankees are 1.5 games behind the Blue Jays, pending Toronto’s matchup with the Los Angeles Angels on Friday.
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Meanwhile, the Mets have won three in a row and are a half game behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the NL East lead.
