​Never in franchise history had the Mets scored 12 runs in a home game and still lost. Well, there’s a first time for everything. This 16-12 defeat to the Royals at Citi Field brought a cascade of happenings never seen before, and I’ll attempt to describe them in roughly 2,500 words, though a baseball game like this defies easy description.
Cionel Pérez, serving as an opener ahead of Kodai Senga, wriggled out of trouble in the first inning to keep the Royals off the scoreboard. With one out, Bobby Witt Jr. continued his ascent on the AL hits leaderboard by lining a single to right. Lane Thomas followed with another single, and Pérez balked to move the runners to second and third with only one out. Yet Pérez recovered, striking out Salvador Pérez and inducing a pop fly from Jac Caglianone to end the frame unscathed.
It looked as though Seth Lugo might perform a similar Houdini act in the bottom of the first, but what unfolded instead was, in the truest sense, the Metsiest sequence imaginable, applied to an opponent. A.J. Ewing led off the inning with a single, and Lugo came back to strike out Juan Soto on a pitch Soto challenged, only for it to be ruled a strike three. Bo Bichette then waited on a Lugo offering and slapped it up the middle for a base hit. Francisco Lindor checked his swing and was called out on strikes, and Carson Benge hit a slow roller toward the mound. Yet in a dizzying turn, rather than the inning ending, Benge crossed home plate with the Mets up 3-0 thanks to a Little League-style trio of throwing errors by the Royals.
Lugo retrieved the ball and fired wildly to first, over which first baseman Jac Caglianone scrambled in foul territory along the first-base line, picking up the errant throw and lofting it into no-man’s-land somewhere between third and home. His aim appeared to be a throw home, but the ball wound up nowhere near the plate. Meanwhile, third baseman Nick Loftin, still in foul territory, made a second attempt at firing home, yet again missing the mark. Carson Benge then slid safely around the bases to complete a full circuit and hand the Mets a three-run lead. I assure you I am describing events that occurred to the opposition, not the Mets, this time. In fact, this marks the first time in franchise history that an opposing team committed three errors on a single play against the Mets. And words can hardly convey the oddity; you’d be best served watching the highlight to grasp the full effect—perhaps with circus music playing softly in the background to set the mood.
Unfortunately for the Mets, their laughter was short-lived. Kodai Senga stepped in to start the second inning and, after recording the second out in a nearly identical sequence to the first-innings mishap—the one that set off the cascade of errors—allowed a single to reach, a development that would foreshadow the chaotic defensive display to come. The rest of the tale would unfold with a blend of power, misplays, and unlikely scoring that kept the Citi Field crowd alternately astonished and at a loss for words, as the ball repeatedly found fresh avenues to defy expectations.