PHILADELPHIA -- Brandon Nimmo was ticking off a list of the Mets’ accomplishments Saturday night at Citizens Bank Park when he reached the part about all those home runs.
“What was it, seven?” Nimmo said. “Yeah. That’s crazy.”
Among the many possible adjectives to describe seven homers in a game, “crazy” applies as well as any. All seven were solo shots, tying a Major League record. This was also just the fifth time in franchise history that the Mets had hit seven homers.
Nimmo went deep twice. So did Juan Soto. Francisco Lindor, Nimmo and Soto hit back-to-back-to-back home runs in the third inning, before Jared Young and Francisco Alvarez added a pair of late shots.
Most importantly for the Mets, the power jolt allowed them to snap their season-long seven-game losing streak with an 11-4 drubbing of the Phillies.
“It was a pretty impressive showing there by a lot of our guys,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Hit some bombs.”
In many ways, this was an offensive catharsis for the Mets, who rapped out 15 total hits on the night. Soto had a season-high four of them and drove in four runs, another personal high. Lindor added multiple extra-base hits and three RBIs. Seven Mets scored runs and nine reached base safely at least once, with much of the damage coming against Phillies starter Mick Abel and reliever Joe Ross.
It was Nimmo who first stepped up to the launching pad, homering in the opening moments of the game. Two innings later, Lindor led off the third with a homer to snap an 0-for-18 skid at the plate. Nimmo followed with another, and Soto added a third consecutive long ball to complete the franchise’s first instance of back-to-back-to-back homers since 2022.
“To see the two other guys go way further than what I did, it was pretty cool,” Lindor said. “They capitalized on mistakes and hit the ball really far. It was cool to watch.”
Lindor later came within a few feet of another home run, settling for a two-run double. But his teammates weren’t finished hitting the ball over the fence. In the fifth, Soto parked a Ross pitch deep into the second deck in right field. At 437 feet, it was Soto’s longest homer of the season.
“It feels pretty good,” he said, laughing. “Finally, I’m getting some luck.”
The combined distance of New York’s seven home runs: 2,911 feet, or more than half a mile. It all made for a fun, breezy game for a team that badly needed one, allowing the Mets to look past another middling starting pitching outing -- this one from Griffin Canning -- and enjoy a relatively easy win. For once, Mendoza could relax in the later innings. For the first time in more than a week, the Mets could celebrate in their postgame clubhouse with the music turned high.
“You’re going to go through it, but we know we’re good,” Mendoza said. “We know we have good players.”
Perhaps no one needed this sort of night more than Lindor, who had been chasing balls out of the strike zone with regularity during the Mets’ seven-game losing streak against the Rays, Braves and Phillies. In the hours following his team’s seventh consecutive loss on Friday, Lindor did his best to steer a conversation about the team back toward himself.
“We have to be better than we are -- especially me,” Lindor said. “I have to be better. I’m at a point where I’ve got to do stuff to help the team.”
As Lindor goes, Mendoza said the next day, the Mets tend to go. The team has now won 28 consecutive games in which Lindor has homered, one shy of Carl Furillo’s 71-year-old record.
Asked about that streak, Lindor grinned.
“I wish I would have hit homers in Atlanta,” he said.