Mets ride Pete Alonso’s power, stellar defense to series win over Dodgers

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.

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.

All three runs the Mets scored arose from inadvertent assists from the Dodgers, who were charged with four errors.

In the first, Soto sent a two-out hard ground ball to the left side.

Max Muncy fielded around the traditional shortstop position and booted the ball, which trickled a couple feet away.

Muncy picked up and threw strong to first, but Soto — who had come under scrutiny after not running hard on a grounder in The Bronx and a would-be double in Boston — sprinted the full 90 feet to reach.

With the inning extended, Alonso made the Dodgers pay.

He demolished the next pitch from Landon Knack into the left-field seats, snapping a career-long drought of 65 at-bats (in 16 games) in which Alonso had not homered.

The Mets added insurance in the third, when shortstop Mookie Betts airmailed a flip to second base on what might have been a double-play ball from Mark Vientos that allowed Francisco 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 too stout for the Dodgers.

The tone was set immediately, Tyrone Taylor making a charging catch in the first inning and hurling the ball — and himself, winding up on the grass — as hard as he could, gunning down a tagging-up Betts at the plate. Luis Torrens applied the snap tag just in time.

The Dodgers went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and stranded seven on base in part because of defensive plays such as:

• A bases-loaded, fifth-inning ground ball to Vientos, who fielded and slipped but rose to throw out Will Smith.
• A smooth double play to escape potential trouble in the sixth, which ended with Andy Pages hitting a hard grounder to Brett Baty at second. In one quick motion, Baty fielded and tossed to Lindor, who caught it on the run and threw to first to get out of the inning.
• Soto getting a good jump on a Michael Conforto drive in the seventh, sprinting back, leaping on the warning track and coming down with the ball.