Mets' continued trust that players will turn misfortune around pays off in streak-busting win

Mark Vientos saw the stop sign. He admitted as much later, though, to hear him discuss the sixth-inning play on which he was thrown out at home by several feet in a tie game, the fact that he saw third base coach Tim Leiper hold his hands up did not strike Vientos as an admission at all. “I was just following my instincts.

Once I saw [ Marcus Semien ’s double] was hit off the wall, I was like, I’m gonna go score on that,” Vientos said. “Leip gave me the stop sign, but I followed my instincts and went home. ” As it happened, Vientos’ instincts did not doom the Mets, in large part because with runners on first and second and two out in the eighth, he wrestled an inside pitch into short right field to score Brett Baty with the eventual winning run.

“I’m glad he got that hit and redeemed himself,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said with a chuckle that felt appropriately nervous, given that Vientos made clear he would probably make the same choice again. “Obviously, depending on the situation, we want to make the right play. But I’m always going to be aggressive.

I’m not going to play passive on the baseball field,” Vientos said. “I’d rather make a mistake aggressive than passive. ” In some ways, the 2026 New York Mets are an example of that same philosophy: If the 2025 team sputtered out with the same old names, David Stearns was determined not to replicate last year’s failures this year.