Mets 4
Giants 1
SAN FRANCISCO – The scoreboard in center showed 710 in big numbers. Barry Bonds is four homers away from Babe Ruth.
But Xavier Nady’s and Cliff Floyd’s longballs meant more to the Mets last night.
Entering the seventh inning last night, Steve Trachsel and Giant starter Jamey Wright had each given up a run and the game was tied. But Nady led off with a homer to left on the opening pitch, giving the Mets the lead. The next inning, Floyd’s two-run bomb landed in McCovey Cove beyond the right-field wall, and the Mets nabbed a 4-1 win over the Giants.
Floyd came into the game with just one homer and has slumped at the plate.
“It was awesome, man, just to contribute,” Floyd said of the homer last night. “It’s been a tough month for me thus far, but I’m going to take that positive and sleep better tonight knowing that I helped my team, and hopefully this will start for me going in the right direction.”
Said Willie Randolph of Floyd, who became the first player to drive a ball into McCovey Cove this year, “He’s been quiet, but he’s been working hard in the cage and it’d be nice to get him kickstarted about right now.”
On Monday, the Mets walked Bonds intentionally twice, and Moises Alou responded with a three-run homer and a two-run single. Last night, Bonds led off the bottom of the second inning against Trachsel, and Trachsel did not back down. His first pitch, Bonds fouled off. Trachsel then threw a ball before throwing a pitch outside on the 1-1 count.
“It was away like we wanted,” Trachsel said. “It was just up.”
Bonds drove it the other way into the left-field stands for an opposite-field homer that tied the game at 1-1. The 41-year-old trotted around the bases, then almost looked as if he were hobbling as he went to the dugout.
“It was nice,” Bonds said. “It felt good to hit the ball good today.”
Before last night’s postgame session began, Randolph, who might have been joking, said unprompted, “I just want to say for all you second-guessers that that’s why I walked Barry [Monday] night – because I knew he was going to hit a home run when he came up. And you first-guessers. You know who you are.”
Facing Wright – a pitcher who is off to a strong 2006 but whose career ERA coming into this season was 5.13 – the Mets took a 1-0 lead in the first inning on Paul Lo Duca’s RBI single. But after Trachsel’s two-out single in the second, Wright retired 12 in a row until the middle of the sixth.
Trachsel (6 IP, 3 H, 1 ER) again pitched to Bonds when he came up in the fourth. The right-hander struck him out on four pitches.
In the seventh, Duaner Sanchez came on and with one out and none on, walked Bonds on five pitches. But after Moises Alou singled, Sanchez (14 scoreless innings this year) got Pedro Feliz on a 6-4-3 double play. Bonds finished 1-for-3 with the walk and the homer.
mark.hale@nypost.com
