The Mets caught a break Saturday night.
A game-ending double play was in dispute, the Giants feeling Luis Guillorme did not touch second base.
But the umpiring crew ruled the second baseman had brushed the bag, and a Mets win was secured.
“Maybe,” manager Buck Showalter said a day later, “this thing’s turning a little bit.”
It is only two games, but has the Mets’ luck changed?
The Mets won their first series in over a month with an 8-4 victory over the Giants in front of 28,473 at Citi Field on Sunday, when plenty more broke Showalter’s way.
The Mets had split or lost eight straight series before they survived a game that was closer than its final score.
The game was in doubt in the top of the eighth, when Brooks Raley and a wild Adam Ottavino combined to load the bases on two hit by pitches and a walk.
The Mets were up two runs, Ottavino’s first six pitches were balls, and the feeling of dread crept into the park.
But Ottavino bounced back to strike out former Met J.D. Davis on three pitches.
In the bottom of the inning, Pete Alonso, who was named an All-Star hours earlier, stepped into a two-run home run to all but clinch a desperately needed victory — and the type that had proven elusive.
“We were fortunate. We had some balls find grass that probably shouldn’t have normally,” Showalter said after nine of the 13 hardest-struck balls of the game belonged to the Giants. “So that’s a good sign.”
The Mets (38-46) won for just an eighth time in their past 26 games, but they remained undefeated in a 2-0 July.
They took a series from San Francisco, a club in line for a wild-card spot and a club that looked like the sloppier team this weekend.
For three months of the season, the Mets were the team that consistently made little mistakes that opponents pounced upon.
On Sunday, it was the Mets doing the capitalizing.
The Mets came back from a one-run hole in the third inning without hitting a ball out of the infield.
They loaded the bases against Alex Wood with two walks and a hit by pitch and scored their first run when Alonso won a 10-pitch battle with Wood, who walked him.
Jeff McNeil followed with a ground ball up the middle that second baseman Thairo Estrada stabbed and threw to second base, the ball bounding off shortstop Brandon Crawford’s glove and toward first base.
The Mets scored two on the infield single.
The Mets added two more an inning later, when they only hit one ball hard.
Mark Canha blasted his first home run since June 1, a solo shot, before Brandon Nimmo walked with two outs.
Tommy Pham — who seems to always find the grass — sent a well-placed hit into right field that bounced past outfielder Luis Matos’ glove, allowing Nimmo to score all the way from first.
“The past is the past, and it hasn’t been what we wanted,” said David Peterson, who somehow escaped four innings in which he allowed one run on three hits and three walks. “But it’s a new month.”
There is a new rallying cry around the club, who bent in the seventh inning but did not break.
The Giants climbed within one run, scoring three off Jeff Brigham — the biggest blow a two-run homer from pinch-hitter Blake Sabol.
But the Mets padded the lead in the bottom half thanks to a well-placed double down the first-base line from Alonso and, of course, a bloop single from Starling Marte.
“It was really nice to see the ball land,” said Alonso, who has hit into plenty of bad luck this season.
Seemingly every hard-hit ball by the Giants went to a glove.
The Giants stranded 12 base runners and went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position, including rookie Casey Schmitt smashing a ball into Francisco Lindor’s mitt in the second inning and crushing a 107.8 mph groundout to McNeil in the fourth.
David Robertson finished off a game in which Showalter used seven pitchers, unleashing every weapon he had.
Does Showalter’s crew have a new tool in its arsenal?
“Just Lady Luck a little bit,” the manager said.
