The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA—Yoenis Cespedes and the N.Y. Mets felt they’d caught a lucky break—no broken bones for the slugger.
Cespedes wound up with bruises on two fingers of his left hand after he was hit by a pitch last night in a testy 7-5 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.
X-rays were negative on Cespedes, who was struck on the ring and middle fingers.
“That’s always scary,” said Mets’ manager Terry Collins.
“Very relieved he’s OK.”
Cespedes was hit by Justin De Fratus and came out of the game.
“I felt pain when I first got hit,” Cespedes said through a translator.
“I was relieved when X-rays came back negative.”
De Fratus said it was a sinker that got away.
“I hope he’s OK,” he said. “We don’t want to be doing them [the Mets] any favours, but that’s not the way I want to do it.
“I feel bad about it.”
Acquired at the July 31 trade deadline from Detroit, Cespedes is batting .287 with 17 homers and 44 RBIs in 54 games with the Mets.
Overall, he has set career highs this season with 35 home runs and 105 RBIs.
Cespedes exited in the third inning after being hit, but returned to the dugout in the sixth when the benches started to empty following a high-and-tight pitch.
Daniel Murphy and Michael Conforto homered for the NL East champion Mets, who began the day with a one-game lead over the L.A. Dodgers for home-field advantage in the Division Series.
Freddy Galvis drove in two runs for the Phillies and scored the go-ahead run in the sixth on a wild pitch.
The teams combined to use 17 pitchers in the three-hour, 59-minute game.
“It was an ugly game,” Collins admitted.
“We have to get rekindled here,” he stressed. “We’ll get it going.”
The Phillies, meanwhile, need to win two of their last four games to avoid losing 100 games for the first time since 1961.
“I know I wake up every day, knowing I don’t want to lose 100 games,” De Fratus said.
“That wouldn’t be a nice thing to sit on in the off-season.”
Elsewhere in the NL, Atlanta beat Washington 2-0, San Francisco upended L.A. 5-0, Milwaukee blanked San Diego 5-0, Arizona downed Colorado 3-1, and Chicago dumped Cincinnati 10-3.
St. Louis split a doubleheader with Pittsburgh, losing the opener 8-2 before taking the nightcap 11-1.
