MLB Rankings: Greatest Hits in Week-8
Juan Lagares | May 22 | 60 %
The Mets had won the first two games of their series with the Nats, but Max Scherzer buffaloed New York through six innings of the Wednesday game. In a showdown with Jacob deGrom, Scherzer shut out the Mets on just four hits, striking out nine.
Combined with Adam Eaton’s first inning home run, that staked the Nats to a 1-0 lead which relievers Joe Ross and Matt Grace protected in the seventh.
In the eighth, however, Nats manager Dave Martinez played bullpen routlette and got burned.
Martinez removed Graves in favor of Kyle Barraclough, who retired two of the first three batters he faced, but was removed after a double and a walk put the go-ahead runners on base.
Sean Doolittle replaced Barraclough, but hit Carlos Gomez, loading the bases for Juan Lagares.
He came to the plate batting barely over .200, but hey, that’s merely a number. The odds measured New York’s chance of winning at just 28 percent, but that’s just a percentage. Lagares had the answer for all that math, a line drive double to center that scored all three baserunners.
Before the third out was recorded, New York had a 6-1 lead that one-half inning later became a 6-1 victory.