• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers
• Game Tracker

Lagares, Colon lead Mets past Nationals

May 18, 2014 - 5:18 AM Washington, DC (SportsNetwork.com) - Juan Lagares homered, drove in three runs and provided his usual gold-glove caliber defense to help the New York Mets take down the Washington Nationals, 5-2, in the middle test of a three-game set from Nationals Park.

Eric Campbell drove in two runs for the Mets, who snapped a three-game losing skid. Lagares, Campbell and Daniel Murphy all had two hits and scored once.

"He had a good game. That's great. That's why we put him in there," Mets manager Terry Collins said of Lagares.

Bartolo Colon (3-5) had Washington off-balance for most of the afternoon, tossing eight strong innings of five-hit, two-run ball with five strikeouts. Jenrry Mejia, who won his first three decisions of the season as a starter, pitched out of the pen for the third time and recorded his first major league save with a scoreless ninth. Mejia had just one save in his professional career -- a minor league save in 2007 while playing in the Dominican summer league -- to this point.

Washington had won the first four meetings between the two clubs this season.

The recent struggles continued for Washington starter Gio Gonzalez (3-4), who surrendered seven runs on nine hits against the Athletics in his last start. It wasn't much better this time around, as Gonzalez exited after yielding five runs in three innings to absorb the loss.

"[I was] falling behind on everyone," Gonzalez said. "It definitely plays a toll on your pitch count. It slows the game down a lot, gets players on their heels. I didn't give any spark to the game."

Gonzalez struck out leadoff hitter Eric Young Jr. to start the contest, but it was all downhill from there. Murphy and David Wright singled and Chris Young walked to load the bags for Campbell, whose single to center made it 2-0. Young moved to third on Campbell's poke and scored when Lagares slapped a pitch the other way to right one batter later.

Campbell singled with one away in the third inning for Lagares, who extended the margin to 5-0 when he took a 3-2 Gonzalez offering over the wall in left- center.

Ian Desmond's two-run shot to left in the bottom of the fourth made it 5-2, and Jayson Werth nearly made it 5-3 with a solo shot two innings later, but Lagares made sure that didn't happen.

Werth, who ended Friday's contest by robbing Murphy of a potential game-tying homer, started the sixth by drilling a pitch to the wall in center that looked destined to clear the wall. Lagares tracked it the whole way and leaped, grabbing the ball at his highest point and keeping it in the ballpark.

Werth led off the ninth with a single up the middle against Mejia, but Wilson Ramos and Danny Espinosa struck out around a Desmond grounder into a fielders' choice.

Game Notes

The Mets moved to 11-10 on the road this season but still find themselves two games under .500 on the season ... Desmond had two of Washington's six hits ... The Nationals went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.