Mets topple Dodgers to reach NL Championship Series

“He’s about as locked in as I’ve ever see him”, Wright said.

Her son Gerry says you can tell how the team is doing just by the expression on her face. “If the guys here this year are all back next year, we’ll have the guys”. “That’s about as challenging as it gets”, Wright said.

He was pitching on the standard four days of rest.

The game-winning home run by Murphy came in the 6th inning and Murphy finished the game as the first player in Major League Baseball history to hit a single, double, home run with a stolen base, all in the same game.

The New York’s team manager Terry Collins felt the need to visit the mound on various occasions and according to sports commentators it would have been justified to remove deGrom, but the manager decided the pep talk would be sufficient.

With the Mets clinging to a 3-2 lead after his homer in the sixth Thursday night, Murphy referred to his faith in describing what he was feeling knowing there was still time for the Dodgers to regain the lead.

Not the safest way to celebrate, fortunately no one got hurt. “He’s always to me been a guy that’s been a tough out”. Familia retired pinch-hitter Chase Utley – who earned the Mets’ wrath after his takeout slide broke shortstop Ruben Tejada’s leg in Game 2 – on a flyout leading off the ninth. When Duda walked on a 3-1 pitch with one out, Murphy jogged to second and suddenly sprinted to third.

He backed up his words by bringing in closer Jeurys Familia to open the eighth, after rookie starter Noah Syndergaard threw a scoreless seventh. The right-hander, who turns 32 next week, has the option of voiding the last three years of his contract and becoming a free agent.

So the events of the first inning left Dodger Stadium feeling a bit uneasy, not sure what they were seeing. “Being right there, that’s what you really do”, she said.

“We have a good team here”, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez said.

“It’s just disappointing”, Mattingly said after a Game Five that was decided by Daniel Murphy’s go-ahead home run in the sixth inning. But because the Dodgers had been shifting to the right side against the left-handed-hitting Duda, no Dodger was covering third, and no Dodger called time.

It didn’t help, of course, that Mattingly appeared to get in a screaming match – or at least was screamed at – by veteran Dodger outfielder Andre Ethier during the third inning Thursday.

Turner, a former Met, doubled in the third and fifth innings to give him a franchise-record six for the series, breaking Hanley Ramirez’s mark of four set in the 2013 NLDS against the Atlanta Braves.

The opener of the best-of-seven NLCS is at Citi Field in New York on Saturday.

“Back in 2006, it was a little less stressful because we ended up sweeping them”, Wright said.

Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Yasmani Grandal will undergo shoulder surgery next week, reports the Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett.