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USATSI

The Yankees and Mets packed 10 innings of excitement into an eight-inning game Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. In Game 1 of their doubleheader, the Yankees mounted a five-run comeback in the bottom of the seventh inning to send the game to extras, then walked it off in the eighth inning (NYY 8, NYM 7).

Aaron Hicks brought the Yankees, who'd lost seven of their previous eight games, back from the brink with a game-tying, two-run home run against Edwin Diaz in the seventh inning. The Yankees scored all five seventh inning runs with two outs.

The seventh-inning rally started with a throwing error by Mets third baseman Andres Gimenez. That put the leadoff runner on base. Also, Yankees infielder Thairo Estrada was dead to rights at third base going first-to-third on Luke Voit's two-run single. The throw was in time and J.D. Davis slapped the tag on Estrada, but the ball popped out of his glove. It would have been the final out of the inning.

Reliever Chad Green, who blew two late-inning leads earlier this week, struck out all three batters he faced with the automatic runner at second base in the top of the eighth inning. That set up Gio Urshela for the two-out, two-strike walk-off single in the bottom half.

The Mets had a 99.8 percent chance to win Sunday's game after Urshela flew out for the second out of the seventh inning, according to the win probability data at FanGraphs. At that point the Yankees were down five with a runner on first. The next four batters reached base to tie the game, then the Yankees won it the next inning. For the Yankees, it was a 1-in-500 comeback.

According to YES Network stats guru James Smyth, Sunday's comeback was the first five-run comeback in the final inning for the Yankees since July 16, 2000, against the Phillies. In that game the Yankees scored five runs in the ninth to tie the game, then gave up two runs in the top of the 10th, then scored three runs in the bottom of the 10th to win.  

Diaz was tagged with the blown save, his fourth of the season and third since returning to the closer's role following Seth Lugo's move back into the rotation. He's been very good overall this year (2.25 ERA with 28 strikeouts in 12 innings), and he inherited a mess Sunday, but the bottom line is he has not been the lights-out closer the Mets need him to be. Sunday was another rough one.

"We still trust him," Mets manager Luis Rojas told reporters, including MLB.com Anthony DiComo, following the game. "We still love his stuff. And that's when he's going to get the ball, when there's tight situations."  

The Yankees and Mets had last weekend's series at Citi Field postponed because the Mets had two positive COVID-19 cases. They're playing five games in three days this weekend and they have been action packed. Friday night the Yankees became the first team in over 100 years to give up a walk-off homer in their own park, then Saturday they won on a walk-off wild pitch.