LOS ANGELES — It happened in a literal blink, a quiver of Mark Vientos’ eyebrow under his sunglasses when he understood the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision. They wanted nothing to do with Francisco Lindor, and they preferred Landon Knack face Vientos in a crucial spot.
“All right, you want me up?” Vientos summarized his own look. “I’m gonna show you.”
“There’s one thing that Mark doesn’t lack, and that’s confidence,” Lindor said chuckling. “That’s who he is. I’m glad he took it personal.”
It takes a certain kind of confidence to view that decision by Los Angeles, to bypass your team’s obvious MVP who’d already homered in the game to face you, as disrespectful. But you don’t step into the big leagues at 22 calling yourself “Swaggy V” without that precise level of hubris. And on Monday in Game 2 of the NLCS, Vientos justified that self-belief as he has all season long.
Vientos’ second-inning grand slam was the keynote of the Mets’ 7-3 win over the Dodgers on Monday in Chavez Ravine. A day after being flattened by Los Angeles, the Mets returned the favor to even the series. Game 3 is in Queens on Wednesday night.
SLAMMA-JAMMA@MarkVientos_5 | #LGM pic.twitter.com/UzsPArfiPP
— x – New York Mets (@Mets) October 14, 2024
At this point, it’s no surprise to see the Mets pick themselves off the mat as swiftly as they did Monday. Resilience is the animating impulse of this team, and its belief in its ability to rebound has only strengthened throughout the season.
But belief, like currency, requires something legitimate in reserve backing it up. And so often for the Mets this season, that belief has been fueled by the quality of their at-bats, by the finer points of pitch recognition, of controlling counts, of seizing upon a mistake in the moment.
That belief is built on at-bats like Monday’s biggest from Lindor and Vientos.
Vientos’ at-bat against Knack was a clear pivot point early in the game. The Mets had jumped ahead on Lindor’s leadoff homer, and they’d added one run already against Knack in the second. But Francisco Alvarez had popped up with two in scoring position, and the Dodgers were an out away from keeping the game tight.
Given his reaction to Lindor’s free pass, you might have expected Vientos to be especially aggressive against Knack. But his emerging sense of poise was obvious from the start, when he comfortably took Knack’s strike-to-ball slider to start the at-bat.
“He understands that he’s not bigger than the moment,” Lindor said of Vientos’ approach. “He’s just got to be part of the moment.”
Vientos fouled off a pair of sliders to make it 1-2, then fouled back a hard fastball above the strike zone. Vientos hunts the fastball: More than half his homers this year came on heaters, and he slugged .670 when he put in play four-seam fastballs like Knack’s.
Which is why, when ahead 1-2, Knack threw him four straight sliders — two in the dirt he laid off and two on the plate he fouled off. Eight pitches deep into the at-bat, Knack tried to get a fastball by him on the outside corner. It was right down the middle.
“I didn’t think he was going to give me a fastball,” Vientos said. “My approach was to see a heater up, but I wasn’t expecting heater. I thought I was going to get a slider and I was just going to poke it in the hole.”
And when he saw the fastball?
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to miss it.”
Vientos took it 391 feet the other way to make it 6-0.
“The deeper you get into the at-bat, you’ve got more information,” Lindor said.
“You only have so many tricks,” said reliever Ryne Stanek, explaining the pitcher’s perspective on those long at-bats. “It makes the at-bat substantially harder when you’ve exposed everything you’ve got.”
Vientos is backing up a breakout regular season with a bonkers postseason: Through nine games, he’s hitting .378 with three home runs and a 1.086 OPS. (10/86? That was a good month for the Mets.)
“He’s growing up,” said Lindor.
“He’s been doing special things this whole year,” starter Sean Manaea said. “He’s risen to every occasion.”
Lindor had provided a blueprint for that at-bat one inning earlier, leading off the game. Against Ryan Brasier, Lindor fouled off two fastballs and two sliders before, on the eighth pitch, Brasier resorted to his third-best pitch: a cutter he’d thrown just 12 percent of the time this season.
That, too, was center-cut. Lindor banged it into the Mets bullpen, halting Los Angeles’ 33-inning scoreless streak in the process.
“It just kickstarts everything,” Manaea said. “It’s a new day, it’s a new game. You can’t really start off any better way.”
“(It was big) not just because of the homer but the way he attacked him,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He fouled off a couple of pitches, laid off a couple of breaking balls and got a pitch and drove it to set the tone.”
The Mets worked those long plate appearances all day. Jesse Winker had helped spark the rally in the second with a seven-pitch walk. Tyrone Taylor drove in a run despite being down in the count 0-2. Pete Alonso had a 10-pitch at-bat later, even if it ended in a strikeout.
The series now returns to Queens, shortened to a best-of-five with home-field advantage shifting to the Mets.
“We get punched in the face and we continue to find ways to get back up,” Mendoza said. “And it will continue to be that way.”
(Photo of Mark Vientos: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
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