Duran's Ninth-Inning Single Breaks New York's Heart, 3-2

Francisco Lindor was the best player on the field Sunday — and Boston still won. The Red Sox rallied for three runs across the ninth and tenth innings to steal a 3-2 decision from the Mets on July 12.

Lindor put on a one-man show for New York. He doubled to left in the first inning, scoring Ewing to give the Mets an early lead, then went back to work in the sixth with a 377-foot home run to left center that pushed the margin to 2-0. Two hits, two RBI, one run — on paper, that's a winning performance. The problem was everything that happened after the seventh inning.

Zach Thornton had been magnificent, holding Boston to just 2 hits over 7.0 innings with 0 earned runs and 5 strikeouts. But the Mets couldn't hold it. In the ninth, Rafaela scored on a Monasterio walk to make it 2-1, and then Jarren Duran singled to right, scoring Cheng and tying the game at 2-2. That single was the gut punch: the Mets' win probability dropped from 60% to 32% on that one swing of the bat — a 28-point collapse in a single at-bat. Payton Tolle, who had come on in relief and struck out 7 over 3.2 innings, couldn't escape the inning with the lead intact.

Boston wasn't done. In the tenth, Seigler — who had gone 0-for-4 at the plate — delivered a sacrifice fly to left that scored Yoshida and gave the Red Sox the 3-2 lead for good. Aroldis Chapman closed it out with a clean 1.0 inning, allowing just one hit and striking out one. The story of the night, it appears, was Boston's relentless late-game pressure against a Mets bullpen that had been handed a two-run lead and couldn't protect it. Thornton deserved better. Lindor deserved better. The Mets, frankly, deserved better — but that's baseball, and Boston took full advantage.