Mets snap skid with 3-2 walk-off win over Minnesota Twins | April 22, 2026 | SS Francisco Lindor | Photo by Gabrielle Raucci, On NJ Sports
Photo by Gabrielle Raucci

The New York Mets Have Won a Ballgame

The New York Mets ended a 12-game losing streak Wednesday night at Citi Field, outlasting the Minnesota Twins 3-2 with disciplined, sharp, and situational baseball.

 

It took all nine innings, a baserunning blunder, a tying home run, and a 70-mph bloop single to right field to get there. But the Mets got there.

“We’re gonna use this as a learning point and hopefully a catalyst to the future,” said reliever Luke Weaver, who closed out two innings of high-leverage work that this team desperately needed from him.

Holmes Anchors for Seven

Clay Holmes did everything a staff ace is supposed to do in a game with this much weight attached to it.

He struck out three over seven innings and allowed only five hits and two runs. 

His sinker was generating weak contact from the first pitch, and he was working ahead in counts consistently enough to stay efficient deep into the game – an increasingly rare quality in this era of starting pitching. 

 

In five starts this season, Holmes has yet to allow more than two runs. His ERA sits at 2.10, reflecting a pitcher who is locating his best with precision and trusting it without hesitation.

“That sinker put them on the ground, kept getting ground balls,” Carlos Mendoza said. “He was pitch efficient, gave us seven innings – pretty solid outing by him.”

The one crack in an otherwise dominant performance came in the sixth, when Holmes left a sinker up in the zone, and Byron Buxton made him pay instantly. The ball traveled 409 feet to left on a no-doubter that tied the game at two. But overall, Holmes continues to show that he is this team’s more reliable starter.

Lineup Construction and Payoff

Mendoza’s decision to slot Bo Bichette at the top of the order and bump Francisco Lindor to the cleanup spot paid dividends before the Mets had even recorded three outs.

Bichette led off the bottom of the first with a double. Two outs later, Lindor punched a single down the third-base line to score him – a clean, professional at-bat that set the tone for how New York wanted to play the game. 

 

The Mets looked far more disciplined from top to bottom, and it was clear they were leaning on their newfound philosophy of not muscling their way to runs tonight. Instead, they were going to manufacture them, and the early innings showed that approach had real teeth when executed properly.

The second run came in the fourth on Francisco Alvarez’s RBI double to right-center, scoring Lindor. Two different innings, two different mechanisms – a situational single, then an extra-base hit that found a gap. 

 

That is the offensive identity this team is trying to build, and on Wednesday, it held up through the middle innings even when everything else tightened.

Lindor’s Night Cut Short

The cost of that fourth-inning run was high. As Lindor came around to score on Alvarez’s double, he settled into a sitting position at the plate, and it was apparent that something was wrong. 

 

He was pulled before the fifth inning with left calf tightness and will undergo an MRI on Thursday.

It’s a brutal development on a night when Lindor was locked in – two hits, an RBI, a run scored, and building on a defensive clinic. Bichette slid over to shortstop in his absence, Baty entered at third, and the Mets kept the game moving. 

 

Mendoza was measured in his postgame assessment, noting the organization will wait on the MRI results before making any roster decisions. But reading between the lines, the Mets appear to be preparing for an IL stint.

Soto’s Return

The most anticipated subplot of Wednesday’s game was Juan Soto’s activation from the IL after missing time with a calf injury, and he looked as though he hadn’t skipped a beat.

His first at-bat produced a 387-foot fly ball to center off a 96 mph fastball – a ball that in mid-July is likely leaving the yard, and that even in April made clear his timing was intact. 

 

His second at-bat was a 104.3 mph line drive to right. He drew a walk on six pitches in the fifth, then led off the eighth with a single to right field.

Soto was picked off first in the eighth, a mistake that stung at a critical juncture. But one lapse in baserunning awareness doesn’t change the larger takeaway: he’s back.

 

Vientos’ Full Arc

If this win needed a narrative, Mark Vientos provided it entirely on his own,

In the sixth, with two outs and Marcus Semien’s double sitting in the left-center gap, Vientos ran through a stop sign at third base and was thrown out at home by a wide margin. 

It was a poor read compounded by below-average foot speed – third base coach Tim Lieper had his hand up, and Vientos disregarded it. The game stayed tied, and the Mets couldn’t capitalize.

 

 

Two innings later, Vientos was back in the box with two outs, Brett Baty on second, and the Mets needing exactly one hit to win the game. 

Baty and Alvarez had both walked to get there – Alvarez grinding through a nine-pitch at-bat against Justin Topa that once again highlighted a back-in-step approach at the plate.

Vientos delivered when the margin was as thin as it gets by making contact on a 70.3 mph bloop to right field that barely cleared the infield dirt to score Baty as the go-ahead run.

 

Weaver Closes It Out, Buxton Down on Strikes

With Devin Williams unavailable after throwing 21 pitches in Tuesday’s loss, Mendoza handed the eighth and ninth innings to Luke Weaver, and the right-hander navigated both with the composure of a proven high-leverage arm.

He entered the eighth with runners on second and third, two outs in a tie game. He walked the bases loaded on five pitches – feeling rushed, as he later admitted, still working to find his landing spot on an unfamiliar mound in a high-pressure moment.  

After Vientos gave him the lead, Weaver came back out for the ninth and struck out the side, working around a two-out infield single. He struck out Buxton in five pitches for the final out, sealing the Mets’ first win since April 7 with a whiff.

“Look, people smell fear. I’m not the biggest guy in the room, but I ain’t scared of nobody,” Weaver told SNY’s Steve Gelbs postgame.

That is precisely the “dawg” mentality a bullpen needs to claw its way back into the win column.

 

The Takeaway

The losing streak is over, but the questions that built it haven’t all been answered. Lindor’s health looms large. The offense still ranks among the worst in the league in several categories, and Wednesday’s output –  three runs on manufactured situational hitting – is not a sustainable blueprint without more consistency in the middle innings.

What Wednesday did confirm is that when Holmes pitches like a frontline starter, when the lineup executes its approach with patience and situational awareness, and when the back end of the bullpen is locked in, this team is capable of beating anyone. 

“It’s not easy losing games, especially when you get that type of starting pitching,” Mendoza said. “Good teams find a way to win games like that. I’m confident that we will start doing that here pretty soon.”

 

This was a feel-good game. The Mets needed a win, and [a new kind of] streak starts with one.

Perhaps this was that catalyst.

 

About the Author

Gabrielle Raucci
Lead Writer, New York Mets

Gabrielle Raucci is the New York Mets Lead Writer at ONNJ Sports, serving as your primary source for all coverage from Flushing, Queens.

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