It showed. New York grabbed an early lead off Pecko, but Houston chipped away and then broke it open with 2-run innings in both the 6th and 7th, finishing with 10 hits to the Mets' 5. Yordan Alvarez and this lineup have been doing that to teams all summer — he's in the middle of a season that has him in the AL MVP and Triple Crown conversation, and no lead against Houston is ever fully safe.
Zoom out and the stakes were lopsided even if the final score wasn't. Houston is running the AL West at a modest pace, still jockeying with a pack of teams around .500, while New York's turnaround under Green has been more about respectability than any real shot at October.
Pecko lasted only into the 5th, extending a stretch that's now put a Houston starter short of the 6th inning in 13 straight turns. That workload keeps landing on a bullpen that's quietly been among the sport's best since May, and Sunday was one more data point for it.
On the other side, Juan Soto delivered the go-ahead knock a night earlier and still gives the Mets a middle of the order that can put a scare into anybody, series outcome or not.
Houston leaves Queens having taken 2 of 3, one more building block in a division race nobody's pulled away from yet. The Mets head into the stretch run with individual performances worth watching even with the bigger picture already written.