No Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Daniel Murphy, Ike Davis or Johan Santana? No problem for the New York Mets. They might not be going to the playoffs, but Terry Collins' crew showed they will continue to fight as they rallied past the San Diego Padres for a 5-4 victory Tuesday night at Citi Field.
With the Mets down 4-2 in the 8th inning, Angel Pagan got the comeback started with a homerun to right field that just cleared the fence to cut the Padres lead to one. Justin Turner and David Wright followed with singles before Lucas Duda dropped down a perfect sacrifice bunt to advance the tying and go-ahead runs to second and third base, respectively.
Collins said Duda asked him if should bunt and the manager had a simple question for his clean-up hitter.
"I said can you? He said 'yea' and he dropped the bunt down. I was pretty impressed," Collins said.
Impressed or not, laying down a bunt isn't something people around the team are used to seeing from Duda.
"I will tell you honestly, I haven't seen Lucas Duda bunt in the time I've been here with the New York Mets."
After an intentional walk to the suddenly red-hot Jason Bay, pinch-hitter Nick Evans flew out to center field, a ball just deep enough to bring home Turner from third to even up the game at 4-4. Padres lefty Josh Spence, who seemed rattled, proceeded to walk Ronny Paulino to load the basses and Ruben Tejada on a 3-2 pitch that brought home the eventual game-winner.
Jason Isringhausen set the Padres offense down in order to secure his sixth save of the season and 299th of his career.
Chris Capuano started for New York, going 6.0+ innings while allowing four runs on 9 hits on just 86 pitches.
The Mets and Padres continue their series Wednesday night at 7:10 when R.A. Dickey will face off against Aaron Harang.