One team’s fortune is another team’s full-blown disaster — its second in five days.
The Mets became the latest club to crush Aroldis Chapman and Lucas Luetge, who tag-teamed to cough up another final-inning lead as the sinking Yankees suffered a brutal 10-5 loss in the first game of a doubleheader Sunday at Yankee Stadium.
Pete Alonso took Chapman deep for a game-tying home run to lead off the seventh inning, which sparked a six-run rally with the Mets turning Yankee Stadium into their personal playground.
“The amount of momentum and energy we had was incredible,” Alonso said. “Once it started, it couldn’t be stopped.
“It’s a big moment regardless [of the Subway Series]. … But it is really cool having it here, and yes, the crosstown rivalry. But it was really amazing.”
The Yankees (41-41), who lost for the seventh time in eight games and fell back to .500 for the first time since May 7, had no fight left in the bottom of the seventh. Seth Lugo pitched a perfect inning to send the Mets (43-36) to a huge Game 1 win, clinching the series victory heading into the nightcap.
“It’s another awful loss, there’s no other way to put it,” manager Aaron Boone said. “All the sayings and whatever, it’s really freaking hard right now and we gotta go find a way and go compete our asses off right now.”
After Chapman and Luetge combined to turn an 8-4 lead into an 11-8 loss on Wednesday, they did it again Sunday upon being handed a 5-4 lead. It marked the third straight appearance in which Chapman blew a lead, but he didn’t stop there after Alonso’s homer on a 1-2 slider — a pitch selection that Boone later questioned. Chapman hit Michael Conforto with an 0-2 fastball and then walked Jeff McNeil, who was trying to bunt.
Pulled before he recorded an out, Chapman was booed off the mound — just like fellow All-Star Gerrit Cole had been four innings earlier in his shortest start since 2016 — as Luetge came on in relief.
Pinch-hitter Kevin Pillar greeted him with a bloop single to load the bases before Luetge struck out pinch-hitter James McCann for the first out.
But a third straight pinch hitter delivered the go-ahead blow as Jose Peraza ripped a two-run double to left field — with a fan reaching over the left-field wall to interfere with the play, though left fielder Tim Locastro was not going to catch it anyway.
Brandon Nimmo (two-run single) and Francisco Lindor (RBI single) added to the beatdown to push the Mets’ lead to 10-5.
The Yankees had a 4-1 lead after three innings but their ace couldn’t hold it. Cole, coming off his worst outing of the year when he gave up six runs against the Red Sox, got beat up in the fourth inning as the Mets came back to tie it 4-4 on RBI singles from Tomas Nido, Nimmo and Lindor. Cole gave up four runs on six hits and three walks in 3 ¹/₃ innings.
“We have the talent in the room,” said Cole, who admitted to feeling like he let his team down. “We need to continue to fight. Anything’s possible.”
The Yankees got the lead back in the fifth inning on a wild pitch by Marcus Stroman, which scored DJ LeMahieu from third to make it 5-4. The Mets then threatened with two on and two outs in the sixth inning, but Chad Green relieved Jonathan Loaisiga and threw two pitches to escape the jam.
Boone opted not to use Green for the seventh — citing the need to keep him as a leverage/length option for Game 2 with Loaisiga already having thrown 2 ¹/₃ scoreless innings — but the decision came back to bite him with the Mets pouncing on Chapman.
“Every single one of us, we committed to being resilient and being tough outs in the box,” Alonso said. “We just want to be relentless on every single pitching staff we face.”
