Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports David Wright drives in one of the Mets’ 11 runs with a sacrifice fly in the third inning.
MIAMI — Waving a white towel is usually the universal sign of surrender but on Sunday it was a sign of life from the Mets’ near-dead offense.
With the Met bats struggling this season, Curtis Granderson and a few players decided to celebrate each and every hit by waving the white dugout towels, and those towels kept flying around Marlins Park.
The Mets chased rookie righthander Anthony DeSclafani early and pounded the Marlins for an 11-5 win in the series finale. The Mets (35-41) have won four of their last five and took three out of four to win their first series here since September 2012. Though six games under .500, the Mets return to home for a two-game series with the A’s just five games out of first in the National League East.
Every starting position player had at least one hit and seven had two as the Mets tied a season-high with 17 hits.
Granderson and Lucas Duda had three hits. Daniel Murphy had a three-run home run. Kirk Nieuwenhuis had two doubles and Anthony Recker and Eric Young Jr. each drove in two runs.
Jon Niese (4-4) picked up his first win in seven starts dating back to May 22. He went six innings, allowing three runs on six hits. He walked three and struck out four.
Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports Daniel Murphy rounds the bases after going deep off Marlins starter Anthony DeSclafani.
Niese, who was batting eighth for the second straight start, also helped get the Mets going in the second inning. Terry Collins got aggressive with Nieuwenhuis on third and called for a suicide squeeze bunt from Niese. It worked. “We don’t do that much,” the Mets’ manager said. “I didn’t want to just sacrifice. … That’s why Jon hits eighth, the same as Jake (deGrom). They handle the bat fine. I’m not concerned that they’re not going to put the ball in play. We tried something different.”
The Mets chased DeSclafani (1-2) in the fourth on Murphy’s three-run homer that made it 7-0. After the Marlins scored three in the sixth, the Mets added four runs in the seventh with David Wright leading off with a double to extend his hitting streak to seven games. He scored on Ruben Tejada’s RBI single and the Mets added on with Recker’s RBI double and Eric Young’s RBI single. It was the second time this month, the Mets scored 11 runs in a game (June 2 in Philly).
“We could use the off-day (Monday), but almost wish you could carry it over and play tomorrow,” Wright said. “The offense really busted out. Jon Niese did another great job. His line should have been a lot better than it was because a few plays defensively we should have made; he did it, excellent job, throwing strikes, keeping pitch count down; every time he takes the ball think he is going to go nine innings.
“Offensively we haven’t done a lot to pick him up and give him a lot of run support,” Wright said. “So it was good to do that today.”
Niese, who now has allowed three earned runs or less in 19 straight starts, had to work to keep that streak — the longest active one in the majors — alive in the sixth.
Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports Jon Niese gets his first win since May after allowing three runs in six innings of work.
Granderson misplayed Jeff Mathis’ line drive to right to get a Marlins rally going. Mathis scored on Reed Johnson’s liner to left. Giancarlo Stanton singled to left to score Johnson and Marcell Ozuna’s ground ball took a weird hop over Murphy’s glove into center field.
Niese walked Jeff Baker, his second walk of the inning, to load the bases before he struck out Derek Dietrich.
“We hit them hard and hit them early, a lot more comfortable going out there being able to pound the zone, execute pitches when you have a lead,” Niese said. “It was good.”
It was Granderson who got the Mets’ white-towel celebration started in a nod to his favorite childhood NBA team, the Chicago Bulls. The right fielder, who went 3-for-5 with a walk, has now reached base safely in a career-high 31 straight starts. He felt the struggling Mets needed something fun to break the mood.
“We started thinking about it and it popped right from my memory of the Bulls and their three-peat championship, Cliff Levingston or Stacey King out there waving a towel all the time, it just popped in my head and we’ll do that when we get a hit,” Granderson said. “We started doing it and then a couple other guys did it and now we just needed the guy on the base to do it back, Then it got a little bigger. Now we’ve seen the guys in the bullpen doing it and some of the fans in the stands are doing it.
“Hopefully, just something to keep us going.”
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