Last night, Francisco Álvarez (check out his home run chain) became the first Met to hit a game-tying home run with two outs in the ninth inning of a game since all the way back on May 17, when Francisco Álvarez hit a game-tying home run with two outs in the ninth inning off Jason Adam of the Rays.
This is not normal. Before Álvarez in May, the Mets hadn’t had a two-out, game-tying homer in the ninth inning of a game since Michael Conforto took Kyle Barraclough deep on September 13, 2018, a blast followed immediately by Todd Frazier’s game-winning dinger.
Álvarez last night became the first Met to hit a game-tying homer with two outs in the ninth inning on the road since Curtis Granderson off Matt Albers in Washington on July 3, 2017 — a game the Mets then lost in the bottom of the ninth on a Ryan Raburn RBI single.
Last time the Mets won a game on the road after one of these special homers? That was September 13, 2015, in Atlanta, when Daniel Murphy hit a three-run shot off Ryan Kelly and the Mets added three in the 10th for a 10-7 shocker.
All by himself, Álvarez has done this twice this year. The Mets as a team haven’t had a pair of down-to-their-last-regulation-out tying homers since Scott Hairston and Lucas Duda in 2011.
That tied the team record for occurrences in one season. The Mets also enjoyed such clutch hitting twice in 1970 (Dave Marshall and Donn Clendenon), 1988 (Howard Johnson and Darryl Strawberry), 1997 (Todd Hundley and Carl Everett), 2000 (Derek Bell and Bubba Trammell), and 2004 (Mike Piazza and Victor Diaz).
Individually, Álvarez is now tied for the team career record with Hundley, Marshall, and Piazza. Marshall was not another catcher, but an outfielder whom the Mets acquired after the 1969 season from the Giants, along with Ray Sadecki, for Jim Gosger and Bob Heise. The Mets traded Marshall, who hit a total of 13 home runs for them in 264 games, to the Padres before the 1973 season for Al Severinsen. The Mets assigned Severinsen to Triple-A, but he never pitched professionally again.
We Can Pod It Out 149: Revolution 9