LOS ANGELES – It literally happened in the blink of an eye Mark Vientos’ eyebrow twitching under his sunglasses when he understood the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision. They wanted nothing to do with Francisco Lindor and preferred Landon Knack to face Vientos in a crucial spot.

“Okay, do you want me to get up?” Vientos summed up his own view. “I’m going to show you.”

“There’s one thing Mark doesn’t lack, and that’s confidence,” Lindor said with a chuckle. ‘That’s who he is. I’m glad he took it personally.”

It takes a certain kind of trust to see that decision by Los Angeles to bypass your team’s obvious MVP, who had already homered in the game to face you, as disrespectful. But you don’t step into the big leagues at 22 and call yourself “Swaggy V” without that precise level of overconfidence. And on Monday in Game 2 of the NLCS, Vientos justified that confidence, as he has all season.

Vientos’ grand slam in the second inning was the keynote of the Mets’ 7-3 victory over the Dodgers on Monday in Chavez Ravine. A day after being crushed by Los Angeles, the Mets returned the favor to even the series. Game 3 is Wednesday night in Queens.

SLAMMA-JAMMA@Mark Vientos_5 | #LGM pic.twitter.com/UzsPArfiPP

— x – New York Mets (@Mets) October 14, 2024

At this point, it’s no surprise that the Mets get themselves off the mat as quickly as they did on Monday. Resilience is the driving force behind this team, and its belief in its ability to bounce back has only grown stronger as the season has progressed.

But faith, like currency, requires something legitimate in reserve to back it up. And so often for the Mets this season, that belief has been fueled by the quality of their at-bats, by the intricacies of field recognition, checking counts, seizing an error in the moment.

That belief is based on at-bats like Monday’s biggest from Lindor and Vientos.

Vientos’ batting against Knack was a clear turning point early in the match. The Mets had taken the lead on Lindor’s leadoff home run, and they had already added one run against Knack in the second. But Francisco Alvarez had gotten into scoring position with two and the Dodgers were one out away from keeping the game close.

Given his reaction to Lindor’s free pass, you might have expected Vientos to be especially aggressive against Knack. But his emerging sense of poise was evident from the start, as he comfortably used Knack’s strike-to-ball slider to start the at-bat.

“He understands that he is not bigger than this moment,” Lindor said of Vientos’ approach. “He just has to be part of the moment.”

Vientos made an error on a pair of sliders to make it 1-2, then returned a hard fastball above the strike zone. Vientos chases the fastball: More than half of his home runs this year came on heats, and he hit .670 when he put four-seam fastballs in play like Knack’s.

That’s why, when he was up 1-2, Knack threw him four straight sliders: two into the mud he had laid down and two on the plate where he made an error. Eight pitches deep into the at bat, Knack tried to get a fastball past him via the outside corner. It was right in the middle.

“I didn’t think he was going to throw me a fastball,” Vientos said. “My approach was to see a heater coming, but I didn’t expect a heater. I thought I would take a slider and just stick it in the hole.

And when he saw the fastball?

“Yes, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it.”

Vientos took the ball 111 meters the other way and made it 6-0.

“The deeper you get into the at-bat, the more information you get,” Lindor said.

“You only have so many tricks,” reliever Ryne Stanek said, explaining the pitcher’s perspective on those long at-bats. “It makes the battle significantly more difficult when you’ve exposed everything you’ve got.”

Vientos backs up a breakthrough regular season with an incredible postseason: in nine games, he’s hitting .378 with three home runs and a 1.086 OPS. (10/86? That was a good month for the Mets.)

“He’s growing up,” Lindor said.

“He’s done some special things this whole year,” starter Sean Manaea said. “He has risen at every opportunity.”

Lindor had provided a blueprint for that at-bat an inning earlier, opening the game. Against Ryan Brasier, Lindor committed errors on two fastballs and two sliders before Brasier resorted to his third-best pitch on the eighth pitch: a cutter he had thrown just 12 percent of the time this season.

That too was cut centrally. Lindor hit the ball into the Mets bullpen, halting Los Angeles’ 33-inning scoreless streak.

“It gets everything going,” Manaea said. “It’s a new day, it’s a new game. You really couldn’t start better.”

“It was big, not just because of the homer, but because of the way he attacked it,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He made a mistake on a few pitches, laid down a few breaking balls and got a pitch and drove it to set the tone.”

The Mets worked all day on those long plate appearances. Jesse Winker had helped spark the rally in the second inning with a seven-pitch walk. Tyrone Taylor drove in a run despite trailing 0-2 in the count. Pete Alonso later had a 10-pitch at-bat, even though it ended in a strikeout.

The series now returns to Queens, shortened to a best-of-five, with home field advantage shifting to the Mets.

“We’re getting punched in the face and we’re going to keep finding ways to get back up,” Mendoza said. “And it will remain that way.”

(Photo by Mark Vientos: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)