NEW YORK — Christian Scott was two outs shy of pitching seven full innings for the first time in his career. The right-hander has pitched well enough to win in most of his 18 starts this season, his second overall and his first since undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2024, but the Mets have been extra cautious with the pitch counts for the 27-year-old because it’s his first since the surgery.
Once again, he pitched well enough for the Mets to win, and they did exactly that Sunday at Citi Field, edging the Washington Nationals 4-3 to complete a three-game sweep. But they wouldn’t let Scott finish off the seventh inning.
Instead, the Mets brought in the left-handed rookie who has fast become the guy they call on to put out fires, Nate Lavender, with two on and one out. Lavender got out of the jam by retiring the Nats’ 1-2 hitters to preserve the lead and notch his fourth hold in five appearances.
“Seems like every time he comes in, there are two guys on,” said interim manager Andy Green. “Maybe I’ve given him one or two clean innings. It’s always into a mess, but I think he likes the fire more than soft innings.”
In three of his five outings since getting called up from Triple-A Syracuse, Lavender has been called on to pitch with runners on base, two each time. On all three occasions, he’s gotten out of the inning unscathed.
“He’s got elite confidence and conviction in his pitches,” Green said. “No matter what the velo says on the scoreboard, he expects to get the hitter, and that belief carries him through his performance. It’s good stuff.”
Lavender helped finish off another stellar start for Scott (4-3), whose only real downfall was the two leadoff walks that came around to score.
“He’s kind of bullied them with his heater, and then speeds them up,” Green said. “And then the secondary really plays. I thought he kind of followed that script today. He’s going to want back those two leadoff walks that both came around to score, but he commanded the ball well all day.”
The Nationals took three runs off of him over 6 1/3 innings, walking twice and striking out seven times.
“Just establishing the fastballs in the zone, having to expand a little bit later in counts, but two leadoff walks both scored so I’ve got to get a little bit of a better jump in there,” Scott said. “It’s great to be able to hand it to the bullpen, have Lav go out there and have Kodai (Senga) come in. We have a lot of trust in those guys too.”
Scott walked the Daylen Lile to start the second and hit Brady House to put himself in a two-on, none-out jam early, but quickly retired the next two hitters. Keibert Ruiz hit a single to right to score the lead runner, Lile, but House tried to test Carson Benge’s arm in right field and chose poorly in doing so.
Benge, who made a fantastic backhanded catch on the run to end the first inning, threw to second to start a rundown, and the Mets caught him for the third out.
Abimelec Ortiz hit a one-out solo homer off Scott in the third to give Washington (60-66) a 2-0 lead. The Mets rallied to pull ahead in the bottom of the inning, using hits from Brett Baty and Jared Young, and a two-run homer by Luis Torrens off starter Jake Irvin, who is suddenly the hottest hitter on the team.
Torrens, a light-hitting backup catcher, has hit four home runs over his last six games, the most homers in a six-game span of his career.
“It’s fun, I know that much,” Green said. “He’s always driven the ball well in that direction. I thought for a bit, like he was enjoying some of the parks we played in on the road. Smaller right field, intelligent hitting. That ball was crushed today. The ball does not go out easily there. 105 in the Alpo gap. Impressive.
The Mets took four earned runs off Irvin (2-7) over six innings, with an RBI double by Jared Young giving the home team enough of a lead to overcome the third run given up by Scott.
Kodai Senga earned his third career save in the ninth. The right-hander, the Mets’ newest closer with an entrance that rivals Edwin Diaz’s famous trumpets, converted the save Friday and warmed up Saturday. That made this save his biggest test yet in his new role. He passed, retiring the side in order.
“He’s really embraced that role, and he’s been able to adjust quickly in that role,” Torrens said through the team translator. “He’s had good results, so I’m really happy for him.”
The Mets (56-69) remain 10.5 games out of the wild-card spot, but they’ve managed to play enjoyable, entertaining baseball since the trade deadline, which is all the Citi Field fans could ask for at this point in the season.
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