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Blowing a four-run lead to the Los Angeles Dodgers was a bad enough time for the New York Mets on Thursday. The game-tying play made it even worse.
With the Mets up 5-4 in the bottom of the eighth inning, reliever Reed Garrett seemingly got a big out when Andy Pages hit an easy grounder right at third baseman Brett Baty. Dodgers catcher Will Smith had no choice but to make a break for home from third base, where he should have been tagged out.
However, Baty spiked the throw to home and catcher Francisco Alvarez couldn't get a hold of it. As the ball bounced into the air and came down, Alvarez and Garrett collided into each other in a play worthy of a "Three Stooges" episode.
Had Alvarez not essentially set a basketball-style pick against Garrett after losing the ball, Smith still probably would have been out. Instead, he tied the game.
It was the kind of play that harkened back to the days when the Mets inspired more mockery than fear as a large-market team. They're doing everything they can to shed that reputation under owner Steve Cohen, but plays like that can happen to any baseball team.
The inning got worse three batters later when former Mets All-Star Michael Conforto punched an RBI single into the outfield for the go-ahead run.
That single was Conforto's first hit with a runner in scoring position since March 31, the Dodgers' fifth game of the season. It was his first with two outs of the entire 2025 season, which hasn't quite gone according to plan after he signed a one-year, $17 million deal to join the reigning World Series champs. He entered Thursday slashing .167/.311/.270.
With the Dodgers suddenly leading, they brought in Tanner Scott, another new acquisition who has been struggling, for the ninth inning. He struck out two and allowed a single before ending the game on a Luisangel Acuña flyout.
The Dodgers' win split the four-game series with the Mets and kept them in first place in the NL West at 38-25. In arguably the hardest stretch of their season — with series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, New York Yankees and Mets — they went 9-7 despite a heavily depleted pitching staff.
