The Mets pulled off one of the strangest walk-off wins of the season against the Marlins. Down 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth, Jeff McNeil tied the game with a huge solo homer off a 3-1 fastball. The blast landed in the upper deck, and the Mets were back in it. Then Guillorme reached on an infield single, and Nimmo beat the shift with a slap hit the other way. With one out and the bases now loaded after an intentional walk to Lindor, Michael Conforto stepped in.
Conforto fell behind 0-2, fouled off a few tough pitches, and then things got weird. The next pitch was a strike in the zone. The umpire started to ring him up, but then changed it, saying Conforto was hit by the pitch. That meant the winning run scored on a walk-off hit by pitch. Problem was, Conforto clearly leaned into it. The rule says a batter has to try to avoid being hit. He didn’t. Marlins manager Don Mattingly argued hard, but umpire Ron Kulpa said the hit-by-pitch call stood. Umpires can review whether a pitch hit a batter, but not whether he made no effort to avoid it. So the call stood by rule, and the Mets won 3-2 on a walk-off HBP that probably should’ve been a strikeout. Mattingly and Miguel Rojas were furious but couldn’t do much. Kulpa admitted he saw the lean, didn’t have a way to fix it, and shrugged it off. Wild end to a weird game.