The Mets caught a break Saturday night.
A game-ending double play was in dispute, the Giants feeling Luis Guillorme did not touch second base.
But the umpiring crew ruled the second baseman had brushed the bag, and a Mets win was secured.
“Maybe,” manager Buck Showalter said a day later, “this thing’s turning a little bit.”
It is only two games, but has the Mets’ luck changed?
The Mets won their first series in over a month with an 8-4 victory over the Giants in front of 28,473 at Citi Field on Sunday, when plenty more broke Showalter’s way.
The Mets had split or lost eight straight series before they survived a game that was closer than its final score.
The game was in doubt in the top of the eighth, when Brooks Raley and a wild Adam Ottavino combined to load the bases on two hit by pitches and a walk.
The Mets were up two runs, Ottavino’s first six pitches were balls, and the feeling of dread crept into the park.
But Ottavino bounced back to strike out former Met J.D. Davis on three pitches.
In the bottom of the inning, Pete Alonso, who was named an All-Star hours earlier, stepped into a two-run home run to all but clinch a desperately needed victory — and the type that had proven elusive.
The Mets (38-46) won for just an eighth time in their past 26 games, but they remained undefeated in a 2-0 July. They took a series from San Francisco, a club in line for a wild-card spot and a club that looked like the sloppier team this weekend.
For three months of the season, the Mets were the team that consistently made little mistakes that opponents pounced upon.
On Sunday, it was the Mets doing the capitalizing.
The Mets came back from a one-run hole in the third inning without hitting a ball out of the infield.
They loaded the bases against Alex Wood with two walks and a hit by pitch and scored their first run when Alonso won a 10-pitch battle with Wood, who walked him.
Jeff McNeil followed with a ground ball up the middle that second baseman Thairo Estrada stabbed and threw to second base, the ball bounding off shortstop Brandon Crawford’s glove and toward first base.
The Mets scored two on the infield single.
The Mets added two more an inning later, when they only hit one ball hard.
Mark Canha blasted his first home run since June 1, a solo shot, before Brandon Nimmo walked with two outs.
Tommy Pham — who seems to always find the grass — sent a well-placed hit into right field that bounced past outfielder Luis Matos’ glove.
Nimmo scored all the way from first, and Pham was caught between second and third base.
But he was able to scamper back to second because the out-of-position Giants had no one covering the bag.
Such was the Mets’ luck on a night when nine of the 13 hardest-struck balls of the game belonged to the Giants.
The Mets’ bullpen bent and allowed three runs in the seventh inning, the biggest blow a two-run homer from pinch-hitter Blake Sabol off Jeff Brigham.
The Mets’ lead was only one, but not for long.
They scored an insurance run in the seventh thanks to a well-placed double down the first-base line from Alonso and, of course, a bloop single from Starling Marte. Alonso’s dinger an inning later added the exclamation point.
David Peterson survived an outing in which he allowed just one run on three hits and three walks in four innings.
The lefty continually flirted with danger and found his way out because the Giants kept finding gloves.
In the second inning, the Giants put runners on the corners with two outs before Casey Schmitt sent a hard out right into Francisco Lindor’s mitt.
An inning later, the Giants scored their first run on a fielder’s choice, but Francisco Alvarez got them out of further trouble by throwing out Estrada at second base.
The Giants put two more in scoring position in the fourth, and Schmitt smacked a Peterson slider that went 107.8 mph off the bat — but right to McNeil, who made the play for the final out on the inning.
David Robertson finished off a game in which Showalter used seven pitchers, unleashing every weapon he had.
Is a bit of luck now in his arsenal?
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