Gonzalez Has 5 RBIs As Dodgers Down Mets, 7-4
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Adrian Gonzalez tied a season best with five RBIs, including a go-ahead, three-run homer, and the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Mets 7-4 Saturday night.
The Dodgers beat the Mets for the 13th time in 15 meetings and increased their NL West lead over San Francisco to 4½ games.
Zack Greinke (13-8) allowed four runs — three earned — and nine hits in seven innings, throwing 105 pitches on seven days' rest. He struck out four after he was pushed back two days because of elbow discomfort.
The 2009 AL Cy Young Award winner allowed two homers for the third time this season, a three-run shot by Juan Lagares and Lucas Duda's 24th of the year.
Kenley Jansen pitched a scoreless ninth for his 37th save.
Jacob deGrom (6-6) gave up five runs and five hits over six innings and struck out seven after getting reinstated from the disabled list. The rookie right-hander, who was sidelined with rotator cuff tendinitis, threw 86 pitches and also had two hits in his first start since Aug. 7.
Gonzalez, who leads the Dodgers with 87 RBIs, gave them a 5-3 lead in the fifth with his 18th homer after Greinke singled and deGrom walked Carl Crawford with two outs. The Dodgers hit three homers against deGrom in a 4-3 road win on May 21, but he has yielded just two in 75 1-3 innings over his last 12 outings.
Lagares opened the scoring in the fourth with his third homer after Duda singled and Travis d'Arnaud reached on a fielding error by third baseman Miguel Rojas. Gonzalez got one of the runs back in the bottom half with an RBI single and added a sacrifice fly in the seventh.
Daniel Murphy had a pair of singles, raising his NL-leading hit total to 157. The only players in Mets history to finish a season with the most hits in the league were Lance Johnson (227 in 1996) and Jose Reyes (204 in 2005).
TRAINER'S ROOM
Mets: Injuries have hurt the Mets this season. They are 60-70 and 15 games out in the NL East. "I don't think about stuff like that too much, because all teams deal with them," manager Terry Collins said. "You've got to play through it. I mean, we lost Matt (Harvey), and that's a big piece. He would have made a big difference. But he wasn't here, and somebody else had to step up. You never want injuries — but in our case, there are some things we got out of it that we wouldn't have otherwise. If Matt didn't get hurt, maybe we wouldn't have found deGrom. Who knows? So we've found some positives."
Dodgers: CF Yasiel Puig, batting .247 this month with no homers and four RBIs in 83 at-bats, got the night off because his legs were bothering him. "I knew he was getting beat up and he said he was tired, so we thought today was the right day," manager Don Mattingly said.
UP NEXT
Mets: Bartolo Colon (11-10, 3.85 ERA) will make his first start Sunday since his mother, Adriana, died Monday at age 63 from breast cancer. After the game, he will return to the Dominican Republic to attend her funeral.
Dodgers: Kevin Correia (7-13, 4.87) gets the assignment on his 34th birthday, trying to win his third straight start since Los Angeles acquired him from Minnesota. Correia hasn't faced the Mets since Sept. 27, 2012, with Pittsburgh, when R.A. Dickey beat him for the 20th victory of the knuckleballer's Cy Young Award season.
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