September 19—Brandon Nimmo hit a three-run home run in an impressive nine-run fourth inning off José Quintana and pitched seven perfect innings to lead the host New York Mets to a 10–0 victory over the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night.
The Mets (84-68) outscored the Nationals 20-1 in the final two games of the three-game series and went 2-2 behind Starlin Marte’s 1-2 win in Game 10 on Monday. New York is tied with the Arizona Diamondbacks for the second National League wild-card spot, with both teams two games ahead of the Atlanta Braves for the third and final wild-card spot.
Quintana (10-9) benefited from strong run support for the second consecutive game, giving up two hits and two walks to win his fourth consecutive game. He struck out four and extended his scoreless streak to a career-best 22 2/3 scoreless innings.
Nimmo hit his 20th homer of the season in New York’s biggest inning of the season, but it was just his second homer since Aug. 18. The left fielder hit 20 homers for the second consecutive season when he smashed Jacob Barnes’ 0-1, 95-mph fastball over the right-center field fence to bring the visitors in with 1:23.
Nimmo began the game with a walk, moved to second on Pete Alonso’s single, and started the scoring with a slider on Tyrone Taylor’s double.
Mark Vientos then hit a two-run single and rookie Luis Angel Acuna made it 4-0 with an RBI single. Jose Iglesias extended his hitting streak to 12 games with a single and homered off Washington rookie starter DJ Herz (4-8), then Marte took a 6-0 lead with a two-run single off Barnes.
Acuña hit his second home run in the eighth inning, giving the Mets a 9–1 record in their last 10 home games.
Mets star shortstop Francisco Lindor missed his third consecutive game because of a lower back injury that forced him to miss both games in Philadelphia last weekend.
Hurts allowed six hits and struck out a career-high seven runs in 3 1/3 innings.
C.J. Abrams had two hits against Quintana for the Nationals (68-84), who lost the final six games of the season series with the Mets.
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