Jon Niese’s recent pattern of clunker followed by gem continued last night with a beauty by the left-hander, meaning Saturday in Washington should be hell for the Mets.
But that concern is for another day. Last night, the Mets needed a victory to avoid the embarrassment of getting swept at home by the Braves, and Niese answered the call.
With eight terrific innings from Niese, the Mets completed a miserable homestand on a positive note, beating the Braves 6-5 in front of 24,891 at Citi Field.
Josh Edgin and Frank Francisco combined to allow four runs in the ninth, turning the game into a nail-biter before Jon Rauch entered and struck out Jason Heyward — with runners on second and third — to end the game. It wasn’t officially complete until catcher Rob Johnson threw out Heyward at first base by a step after strike three bounced in the dirt.
Niese (9-6) allowed one run on six hits, walked two and struck out six. The strong start came after Niese was tagged for four runs over six innings in a loss to the Marlins on Tuesday. He previously had a dreadful performance in Arizona that was followed by a three-hitter over seven innings with one run allowed in San Francisco.
Manager Terry Collins said the challenge will be keeping Niese sharp when he returns to the mound against the Nationals.
“Dan [Warthen, the pitching coach] and I talked about it on the bench,” Collins said. “I don’t know if we’re doing our job getting him prepared enough to where, ‘Hey, look, that last one is over with. Let’s make this one even better than the last one.’
“It seems like he has a rough [start] and then he gives you exactly what you need, a good outing. Right now to get us back to there we want to be, we need a lot more of it.”
But Niese downplayed the idea he has been inconsistent.
“I wouldn’t consider me struggling very much. I might have had a rough game here and there,” Niese said. “But for the most part I feel like I’ve been working on the things I need to work on and executing when I need to execute. You can’t do it every time, obviously, but for the most part I feel like I’ve been able to do that this year.”
The Mets (55-60) finished 2-4 at home against the Marlins and Braves and have two straight NL powerhouses awaiting them on the road. They will open a three-game series tomorrow night in Cincinnati before heading to Washington for three games beginning Friday.
Jordany Valdespin’s homer leading off the sixth against Ben Sheets (4-2) gave the Mets a four-run lead, before Andres Torres delivered an RBI single in the eighth for the Mets’ final run.
Ike Davis was 2-for-4 with two RBIs and David Wright delivered two doubles to lead the Mets’ 10-hit attack.
Freddie Freeman’s homer leading off the second pulled the Braves within 2-1, but the Mets got the run back in the bottom of the inning on Ruben Tejada’s RBI single.
The 22-year-old Freeman has tortured the Mets this season, with four homers and 16 RBIs in 42 at-bats against them.
“Outside of the pitch to Freeman, who is certainly swinging the bat great, [Niese] really pitched well,” Collins said. “He used his breaking ball, which we talked about early. The only reason we took him out is in the seventh inning he hung a couple and the next inning he hung a couple of other curveballs that were hit pretty good, even though they were outs, so I thought he was done.”