NEW YORK — The Mets weren’t content to simply string together single after walk after single after double to plaster Twins pitching with a season-worst 15 runs. No, they had to subtract from the Twins as well.
New York battered Twins pitching by cracking 17 hits, drawing seven walks and spreading RBI among eight of its hitters. And when a 10-run lead was too narrow for the Mets to coast home, right fielder Tyrone Taylor reached over Citi Field’s padded fence and prevented Ryan Jeffers’ would-be home run from leaving the park.
“When you’ve been really grinding and you feel good, you want that homer so bad,” Jeffers admitted. “So for him to rob that, I didn’t feel great.”
No one did in the visitors’ clubhouse, not after the Twins absorbed their most lopsided loss of the season, 15-2, to drop 5½ games back in the AL Central. The Twins took the lead on the fifth pitch of the game — Byron Buxton followed Manuel Margot’s leadoff double with an RBI single — and scored the night’s final run in the ninth, on Jeffers’ don’t-get-mad-get-even second-chance home run.
“I have to admit, to come back and get another one, I couldn’t ask for more,” Jeffers said with a smile.
In between? The Twins watched the Mets take batting practice against starter Simeon Woods Richardson, four relievers and outfielder Matt Wallner.
The latter “pitcher” — he went 3-0 and saved nine games as Southern Miss’ closer while in college but had not stepped on the mound as a professional — gave up an RBI double in the seventh inning but retired four hitters without allowing any more runs.
“I kept telling batters, trying to freak them out a little bit, they’d come to the plate and I said, ‘This kid hit 100 [mph] in college, just to let you know,’ " Jeffers said with a smile. “And then, here’s 39 [mph].”