Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mike Puma about the inside buzz on the Mets.
Try it free
A consistent problem in the early going -- one acknowledged by their president of baseball operations, David Stearns -- has been the Mets' lackluster defense.
More recently, the club has encountered issues with Juan Soto's hustling and Pete Alonso's disappearing power.
Yet viewers who checked in on a national broadcast Sunday night saw the Mets beat the Dodgers largely because of their gloves, Soto's legs and Alonso's might.
An all-around bounce back effort added up to a well-played 3-1 victory over the most exciting team in baseball, sealing the series in front of 41,917 Mets and Shohei Ohtani fans at Citi Field.
The Mets (32-21) snapped a two-series skid and are still breathing on the other side of a Yankees-Red Sox-Dodgers gauntlet, having won four of nine.
The schedule more hollows than softens from here, the next six games in Queens against the White Sox and Rockies.
"It shows a lot about that group, our ability to bounce back, the grit, the resilience," manager Carlos Mendoza said after his team absorbed a 13-inning gut punch Friday and rebounded to take the series. "It was on display the whole weekend."
The Mets survived Sunday largely because of their defense, which helped Kodai Senga (5 ¹/₃ innings of one-run ball) consistently escape danger after serving up a no-doubter to Ohtani with his second pitch.
They survived because the three relievers who followed Senga were untouched, Ryne Stanek to two innings of Max Kranick to Reed Garrett (first save of the season with Edwin Díaz unavailable) ensuring the team's little bits of offense stood up.
They survived because Tyrone Taylor executed one of the better defensive plays a center fielder can make.
He set the tone immediately, in the first inning making a charging catch while running at an angle.
Without time to collect himself, he positioned his hips and hurled the ball -- and himself, winding up on the grass -- as hard as he could, gunning down a tagging-up Mookie Betts at the plate with some help from Luis Torrens' snap tag.
"He's really good out there because of the little things like that," Mendoza said of Taylor, who deflected credit when asked what he thought about the play upon a look at the replay.
"I thought that Torrens made a nice tag," Taylor said.
Defensive plays like that -- and like Soto getting a great jump on a drive from Michael Conforto that he caught with a leap at the warning track; and like second baseman Brett Baty fielding and flipping to Francisco Lindor in one motion to start a sixth-inning double play -- helped ensure the Mets' offense merely needed to take advantage of the Dodgers' defense.
Each run the Mets scored arose from inadvertent assists from the Dodgers, who were charged with four errors and similarly set the tone immediately.
In the first inning, Soto sent a two-out hard ground ball to the left side.
Max Muncy fielded and booted the ball, which trickled a couple feet away.
Muncy picked it up and threw strong to first, but Soto sprinted the full 90 feet to reach.
"He's a winning player. He does the little things," Mendoza said of Soto, who had come under scrutiny after not running hard on a grounder in The Bronx and not running hard on a would-be double in Boston. "Today, perfect example. He smokes a ball, and not too many people are able to beat that out."
The inning extended, Alonso made the Dodgers pay.
The next pitch from Landon Knack was demolished into the left-field seats, which snapped a career-long drought of 65 at-bats (in 16 games) in which Alonso had not homered.
"Obviously, I knew it was a while," said Alonso, who did not know the extent of the drought. "Sometimes, that happens. And for me, just really happy I was able to come through."
The Mets added insurance in the third, when Betts airmailed a flip to second base on what might have been a double-play ball from Mark Vientos that allowed Lindor to go from first to third.
A batter later, Soto did well to make contact with a 1-2 pitch and hit into a fielder's choice that scored Lindor.
Those three runs were enough because Senga was sharp, the bullpen excellent and the defense far better than that of the Dodgers.
"We're pumped about it," Taylor said. "We love winning ballgames, that's what we're here for."