Rockies suffer 49th loss of season after Kodai Senga, Mets' offense dominate at Citi Field

Abbey Mastracco, New York Daily News on May 31, 2025

Published in Baseball

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NEW YORK — Too often over the last few years, the Mets have shown a frustrating inability to lose games they should have won handily. They fall to lesser opponents and make pitchers with bloated ERAs suddenly look like Cy Young contenders, before rebounding with a resounding win over a top team.

Those days are starting to fade.

The Mets crushed the Colorado Rockies 8-2 on Saturday afternoon at Citi Field to take their third straight series. Kodai Senga was nearly unhittable, Brett Baty hit a three-run triple, and Brandon Nimmo and Juan Soto went back-to-back with home runs in the fourth inning. Jeff McNeil added another in the eighth.

To be fair, the Rockies are better than their 9-49 record would indicate. Manager Carlos Mendoza and a few of his coaches saw a higher caliber of players on the Colorado roster than expected over the first two games of a three-game set. However, this time it wasn’t Antonio Senzatela and his 7.14 ERA looking like a Cy Young contender, it was Senga, who now has a 1.60 ERA on the season, the third-best in baseball.

Ezequiel Tovar, the second batter Senga faced, homered off of a forkball in the first inning to put Colorado up 1-0. It was only the second time a hitter had managed to homer off of Senga’s ghost fork.

Senga then retired the next 17 batters he faced.

The right-hander ran out of gas in the seventh, issuing a leadoff walk to Tovar before getting the first out. He gave up a run but right-hander Jose Butto came in and retired two of three hitters he faced to keep his line intact. Senga (6-3) limited the Rockies to two earned runs on two hits, walking two and striking out seven over 6 1/3 innings, holding a team to three runs or less for the 28th straight time.

Senzatela put the first three runners on base before getting an out in the bottom of the first. He struck out Pete Alonso, but Baty came through with a bases-clearing triple to put the Mets up 3-1. Center fielder Brenton Doyle crashed into the wall trying to make the catch, allowing plenty of time for Baty to reach third for only his second career big-league triple. Tyrone Taylor scored him on a two-out single to make it 4-1.

Senzatela (1-10) exited after the fourth inning. Francisco Lindor, who reached base four times in Saturday’s contest, led off with a single, and Nimmo did what good hitters do when they get a pitch right over the plate by driving it over the right field fence. Soto didn’t need more than one pitch, getting a meatball of a sinker from Senzatela, and sending it over the center field fence for his ninth.

The slumping Soto now has three hits over his last two games, and a first-pitch homer is a positive sign for a hitter who has struggled swinging early in the count. Mets fans recognized him by chanting his name as he ran out to right field for the top of the fifth.

Baty and Taylor made difficult defensive plays at third base and in center field. Jose Butto pitched two innings and Chris Devenski, in just his second major league appearance of the season, pitched a scoreless ninth. It was a good win over a bad team, but a win the Mets (36-22) needed nonetheless.

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