PHOENIX — Here was the perfect getaway-game scenario for the Mets on Thursday: Build an early lead and slowly pull away without much resistance from the Diamondbacks.
Francisco Lindor carried much of the offensive load with a 5-for-5 performance that left him a double short of the cycle and Carlos Carrasco’s sharpest outing of the season meant a largely stress-free night for the Mets, who rolled to a 9-0 victory at Chase Field.
The Mets matched a season-high with their fifth straight victory in completing the three-game sweep that moved them within 6 ¹/₂ games of the final National League wild-card spot.
“We’re going to make something out of it,” Lindor said, when asked if optimism had increased in the clubhouse that the Mets will make something out of this season. “Now the question becomes how deep we’re going to go.”
This one included the benches emptying in the seventh, with the Mets ahead by nine runs, after Francisco Alvarez — who had colorfully celebrated the previous night after hitting a game-tying homer in the ninth — was drilled by reliever Jose Ruiz.
Alvarez looked toward the right-hander as he walked to first base and both dugouts emptied, but order was quickly restored without punches thrown.
Earlier, Alvarez had homered for the third straight game in the series.
“If they did it on purpose or did it to make me feel bad, what they should do is strike me out there,” Alvarez said through an interpreter.
It was a brutal night for the Diamondbacks, who watched NL Rookie of the Year favorite Corbin Carroll leave the game in the seventh inning after he swung and missed at a pitch and then grabbed his left shoulder.
The Mets (41-46) will begin their final series of the first half on Friday in San Diego with visions of heading to the All-Star break on a serious roll.
Adding to the luster of the Mets’ desert sweep was the fact it came against Arizona, which leads the NL West and previously had not been swept this season.
“You will always be satisfied with winning a series, obviously in our position,” manager Buck Showalter said. “But it was good to get greedy so to speak and that is a really good team over there. That is probably one of the most athletic teams we played all year.”
Carrasco allowed just three hits and one walk over eight shutout innings in which he struck out four and threw 96 pitches.
That followed by Kodai Senga’s gem Wednesday, in which he allowed one run over eight innings and struck out 12.
Carrasco entered with a 5.94 ERA and hadn’t completed seven innings in any of his previous starts.
The veteran right-hander credited a new-grip slider that he’s implemented in his last two starts and his fastball command for his success on this night.
“It feels good to go out there and see those guys put nine runs on the board,” Carrasco said. “I know those guys are trying to play hard, getting whatever they can, so just go out there and just hold it right there.”
Carrasco said he would have savored an opportunity for the complete-game shutout, but understood that Showalter needed to get newly-acquired Trevor Gott an inning.
Lindor, who battled a stomach ailment a day earlier that nearly kept him from playing Wednesday’s game — he received intravenous fluids for dehydration — led the rampage with two triples, two singles and a homer.
Lindor tripled with two outs in the first before Pete Alonso hit a line drive over the left-field fence to give the Mets a 2-0 lead.
The homer was Alonso’s 26th this season and fourth since returning from the injured list on June 18 after missing 10 days with a bone bruise in his left wrist.
In the third, Lindor tripled again and scored on Alonso’s RBI single.
But the Mets were just getting started in the inning: Daniel Vogelbach and Jeff McNeil each delivered an RBI double before Alvarez’s two-run homer extended the Mets’ lead to 7-0.
Alvarez’s homer was his third in as many games and fourth since Saturday.
The most dramatic of those blasts came in the ninth inning Wednesday, when he tied the score against lefty Andrew Chapin before Mark Canha’s RBI triple put the Mets ahead in what became a 2-1 victory.
On Thursday, Alvarez wasn’t finished. In the fifth he delivered an RBI single that gave the Mets an 8-0 lead. Vogelbach singled and McNeil walked to start the rally before Alvarez’s dribbler through the middle scored the hustling Vogelbach.
Lindor’s 18th homer of the season gave the Mets a 9-0 lead in the sixth. The shortstop needed a double to complete the cycle when he came to the plate in the eighth, but he settled for his second single of the night.
“We’ve had ups and downs in the first half and it seems like we’ve had more downs than ups,” Lindor said. “Hopefully we can turn it around and have more ups than downs in the second half.”
