The New York Mets are trying to avoid a disaster.

They're trying to avoid a collapse.

And you keep staring at the clock saying, when will hit zero already?

Well, today the Mets went a long way to avoiding the collapse.

They played the San Diego Padres in the rubber game of a three-game series coming off of the loss that they suffered last

night where David Peterson was not very effective.

And the Mets' offense was squarely based on solo home runs.

And Juan Soto missed a dramatic game tying home run by like a quarter of an inch.

And so today was the day the Mets needed to win.

And there was a lot of uncertainty because Jonah Tong was making the start after the disaster

that was last week.

And two things, very important things happened.

Number one, Pete Alonzo exists.

Pete hit a home run that I thought helped set the tone for this game.

Number two, Manny Machado exists because he made a horrible base running decision that helped

Jonah Tung get out of trouble in the very first inning of this game.

There should have been second and third one out with Jackson Meryl coming up, but Manny

Machado loafed in a second base and was thrown out.

And so those two things helped. It also helped that after the Padres tied the game up in the third inning, in the bottom of the third inning, the Mets were able to respond in a big way. Juan Soto had a big RBI, ground out, but Brandon Nimmo supplied the power by hitting a home run that gave him a five to one lead. And it led to Tiki,

I will tell you, one of the most important wins of the season. Well, it's most important because

of Jonah Tong's response after his very bad outing of this last time out. Five innings pitched,

four hits, only one run. A lot of it was helped because of, as you were alluding to,

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