A game that seemed to be on the verge of growing into one of the best triumphs of the Mets’ season instead became one of the bigger disappointments.
Down 5-0 after the top of the first and 8-2 after the top of the third, the Mets’ powerful offense, led by a monstrous day from Juan Soto, responded in a contest that was tied by the sixth.
This was looking like the game the club had waited for: The Mets had not successfully rallied from a deficit greater than four runs all season; a team not known for climbing off the mat had lost in all 54 games in which it trailed after eight innings.
In reality, this was not the game the club had waited for, and make that 0-for-55.
After letting up the game’s first five runs, the Mets gave up the game’s final three in a back-and-forth, 11-8 setback in front of a sellout crowd of 42,726 at Citi Field on Saturday.
“We just didn’t shut them down,” manager Carlos Mendoza said after David Peterson was knocked around for eight runs in two-plus innings, Tyler Rogers allowed the go-ahead run and Edwin Díaz surrendered a pair in the ninth.
By the end of the 3 hours and 14 minutes, the Mets (73-63) were all out of answers and could not carry momentum from Friday’s Jonah Tong night and offensive explosion.
The go-ahead run scored in the seventh, an inning during which the Marlins capitalized and the Mets did not.
In a tie game in the top of the inning and with a runner on second base, Eric Wagaman hit a flare into shallow right-center off Rogers.
Jeff McNeil backpedaled and deked as if he would catch the ball, which effectively kept Augustín Ramírez from scoring.
But with runners on the corners, Connor Norby lifted a sacrifice fly to give Miami a 9-8 lead.
In the bottom half, McNeil lofted a leadoff triple and spent the frame on third base: Brett Baty grounded out, a pinch-hitting Starling Marte struck out and Cedric Mullins lined out.
On an afternoon the Mets continually took body blows and punched back, was this failure to return fire the turning point?
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“Not really,” Mendoza said. “It’s hard to pick on the offense when you give up 11 and put up eight.”
Perhaps the Mets grew tired of climbing out of holes.
After Díaz gave up a pair of runs in the ninth on a Norby double, the Mets brought the tying run to the plate in the ninth, but Mullins struck out.
Of course, their offense did far more good than bad.
With four more home runs, the Mets reached 53 in August to break their franchise mark (previously 49) for most dingers in a calendar month.
Two of those belonged to Soto, who did some of everything and a lot of damage to bring the Mets back within striking distance.
“It feels good, but at the end of the day you want to win the game,” said Soto, whose blasts gave him 35 home runs and whose pair of steals gave him 25 during a first season in Queens that began poorly. “It’s not that satisfying when you’ve lost the game.”
After Peterson’s implosion, the Mets’ attack went to work.
A rally that the offense had begun to hint at in the first couple frames, when Francisco Lindor smoked a leadoff home run, and Baty and Mullins helped manufacture a run in the second, began to take off in the third.
A Soto walk and Brandon Nimmo bloop double set the table for a sizzling Mark Vientos, who crushed a first-pitch, three-run home run over the right field wall to bring the Mets within 8-5.
Soto then completed the comeback with his next two at-bats.
The $765 million outfielder hit a solo shot in the fourth and smashed a two-run homer into the bullpen in right field in the sixth to tie a game that had seemed lost a few times.
It was encouraging. For a team whose offense has outpaced its pitching, it was not enough.
“I think we’re in a good spot,” Soto said of a club that is five games ahead of the Reds for the last wild-card spot and fell to six games behind the Phillies in the division. “[Sixteen] games in a row ain’t easy. A team’s going to have the ups and downs through [16] games. We just have to take it like a man and keep moving forward.”