The Polymarket room noticed the Marlins were live — nearly 12,000 members packed the chat, about 58% above the season median, and it stayed buzzing all night as loanDepot Park tried to manufacture a comeback out of thin air.
Miami's bullpen has been getting hit from multiple directions — Pete Fairbanks was working his way back from a hand issue, Anthony Nardi is done for the year, and Anthony Bender was just shut down again — while a laboring Alcantara had to try to hold a laugher together long enough for the pen to survive it.
The Mets jumped out early and often, scoring in three of the first five innings, and by the time the dust settled they'd built a lead that looked comfortable. Miami answered with a four-run sixth to make a real game of it, and the room's busiest stretch of the whole night came right as the Marlins tried to complete the rally in the ninth — one poster holding Miami wrote "And the comeback starts now," while another holding New York countered by thanking "all you Marlins fans who put money down to fund this win."
It's a strange juxtaposition for a September series — a last-place club playing spoiler against a team still theoretically alive — but for one night, the Mets made sure the fringe contender left the ballpark a little further from where it needs to be.