PITTSBURGH — Two dominant starting pitching performances and quality offensive showings later, the Mets’ ship is sailing again.
The 1-2 combo of Chris Bassitt and Jacob deGrom was too much for this boatload of Pirates, who were equally flustered in trying to contain the likes of Tyler Naquin, Eduardo Escobar and Francisco Lindor over 18 innings on Wednesday.
It translated into a needed doubleheader sweep.
The Mets won the opener 5-1 to snap a three-game losing streak. In the nightcap, they rolled 10-0 at PNC Park for momentum heading into their weekend series in Miami.
The doubleheader sweep gave the Mets a half-game lead on the Braves for first place in this NL East dogfight. A night earlier, the Braves joined the Mets in first place for the first time this season.
Jacob deGrom dominated the Pirates on Wednesday.Getty ImagesOn a day the Mets lost Max Scherzer for at least two starts — he was placed on the injured list with left oblique irritation — the team issued a reminder about the depth of this rotation.
In the nightcap, deGrom fired seven shutout innings and struck out eight with three hits allowed and one walk. It was a second straight appearance in which deGrom completed seven innings. He lowered his ERA to 1.66.
Escobar homered in Game 1 but saved his best work for the nightcap, in which he finished 4-for-5 with an RBI. Naquin delivered a three-run blast in the first game and went 2-for-4 in the nightcap. Lindor stroked two doubles and drove in three runs in the nightcap.
Bassitt steered the rotation back on its expected course with quality and length in Game 1. If not his best performance of the season, it might have been Bassitt’s biggest given the team’s recent play. Bassitt allowed one earned run on five hits with 10 strikeouts and one walk over seven innings.
Scherzer, Carlos Carrasco and Taijuan Walker had previously failed to pitch beyond the fifth inning.
“I’m sure the world was going crazy, but we’re fine,” Bassitt said.
Francisco Lindor slides in safely against the Pirates on Wednesday.APA night earlier the Mets’ lead on the Braves (which was seven games as recently as Aug. 10) disappeared completely. But Bassitt said Atlanta’s surge hasn’t put any additional pressure on the Mets.
“It’s just win today and that’s it,” Bassitt said. “I understand the standings and how well the Braves are playing, but we can only control what we can. Do everything smart and worry about us and that’s it.”
Added Escobar: “The Braves are a good team and you have to give a team like that credit. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t had the results, it’s that they have also played well.”
Early homers from Naquin and Escobar accounted for most of the Mets’ scoring, leaving Bassitt with a comfortable lead to protect against these last-place Pirates.
Naquin — starting in right field a day after Starling Marte was drilled by a pitch on the right hand and departed the game — blasted a three-run homer in the fourth inning against Bryse Wilson that gave the Mets a 4-0 lead. The homer was Naquin’s fourth since arriving from the Reds on July 30.
After Naquin homered, Escobar followed with another, extending the Mets’ lead to 5-0. The back-to-back homers were a fifth-time occurrence for the Mets this season.
Escobar’s homer was his third in five games, continuing a surge from the switch hitter since he returned from an oblique strain that placed him on the injured list.
“I haven’t done anything much different from what I have done from the beginning of the year,” Escobar said. “I think the biggest difference of what I have done is swinging at pitches inside the strike zone, so I think when you swing at good pitches you have good results.”
Though the Pirates announced 8,717 as attendance there might not have been more than 2,000 fans in the ballpark for Game 1 — a makeup from a Monday postponement.
“In this environment you have got to challenge yourself to pitch with that intensity, the first game of a doubleheader,” manager Buck Showalter said. “That is typical Chris, we have come to expect that from him.”
