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NYM@WSH: Wright cranks a three-run shot in the first

WASHINGTON -- The Mets have been one of the National League's top hitting teams this season. They ranked second in the league with a .265 team average before the series opener, but were just 13th in homers, one of six teams with fewer than 100 this season.

Despite those numbers, New York certainly looked a lot like a power-hitting team Friday night. The Mets got homers from David Wright, Nick Evans and Lucas Duda -- a moon shot that carried into the second deck -- as they rolled to a 7-3 victory over Washington before 27,907 at Nationals Park.

Wright gave the Mets (67-69) the lead for good when he blasted a three-run homer just four batters into the game. Evans helped with a solo homer in the second, and Duda crushed a drive that landed halfway into the second deck near the right-field foul pole for his solo shot.

"We got some big swings today out of some guys," said Mets manager Terry Collins, whose club has won three in a row and seven of its last eight.

Wright might have gotten the biggest of all. His homer gave the Mets a 3-0 lead in the first.

This was the first homer Wright's hit at Nationals Park since the stadium opened in 2008. Wright went 2-for-3 and is on a 13-for-26 roll, and said while there's been no magic adjustment, he just wants to keep rolling while the hits are falling in.

"It's not anything that I'm doing differently now than I was doing a couple of weeks ago," Wright said. "It's just some days, you get lucky and you get some bloops to fall in and some days, you don't. When you get on a real hot streak, you have to try to ride it out for as long as you can because you know right around the corner, there's an 0-for-10, 0-for-15 waiting for you."

Evans' homer came when he led off the second and gave New York a 4-1 lead. Angel Pagan's two-run single made it 6-1 in the third, and Duda crushed his long shot off Collin Balester in the seventh.

Evans also is on a roll. He went 2-for-4 and is batting .369 (14-for-39) in 10 starts at first base since Aug. 20. Duda has a team-high eight homers after the All-Star break, with 13 RBIs in the last 12 games.

Overall, the Mets finished with nine hits -- four going for extra bases. That offensive output made Washington starter Ross Detwiler's night rather short. He gave up six runs on seven hits in just three innings, and his record slipped to 2-5.

"It wasn't arguably my worst outing, it [was] definitely my worst outing," Detwiler said. "Nothing worked. Bad location, bad pitches, everything."

The power that made life miserable for Detwiler gave lots of support to Mets starter R.A. Dickey (7-11) on a night when the veteran couldn't quite find his knuckleball.

Dickey was going on three days' rest instead of his usual four, and Collins waved off any concern about that before the game. Dickey struggled with his knuckler and had to go with a lot of other pitches to get through six-plus innings, but he got the job done to win a second consecutive game.

He gave up three runs on nine hits and struck out one. He allowed a two-run homer to Rick Ankiel in the fifth inning, but the Nationals (63-73) couldn't do anything else after that blast made it 6-3.

"As the night went along, it's not hyperbole to say my knuckleball was putrid," Dickey said. "So I had to find a way to eat up innings and keep us in it. I didn't have a good feel for it tonight at all."

Collins turned to the bullpen after that. Tim Byrda and Ryota Igarashi combined to get through the seventh. Josh Stinson then made his Major League debut in the eighth.

The rookie retired the side in order, and Collins let him bat in the ninth. Stinson drew a walk on four pitches against hard-throwing right-hander Henry Rodriguez -- who hit 100 mph twice earlier in the inning.

"[Collins] told me when I was going on deck [to] take two strikes no matter what," Stinson said. "Luckily it got 3-0, and he didn't throw a strike. I wasn't swinging anyways."

Stinson gave up a single in the ninth before getting a double play. After Ian Desmond singled, Collins brought in Daniel Herrera, another new pitcher the Mets acquired this week. Herrera fed former Reds teammate Jonny Gomes a steady diet of slow screwballs and sliders and struck him out on a 67-mph screwball to finish the game.

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