A Grand Night for Alfonzo

PHOENIX —  Edgardo Alfonzo ruined Randy Johnson at the start and buried the Arizona Diamondbacks at the finish.

Alfonzo, who had a solo home run in the first inning, hit a grand slam with two out in the ninth off reliever Bobby Chouinard as the New York Mets beat the Diamondbacks, 8-4, Tuesday night in the opener of their National League playoff series.

Johnson, who left the game with the bases loaded and one out in the ninth, lost his sixth consecutive postseason decision, a major league record. He struck out 11 and held on through an exhausting 138 pitches as Arizona rallied from a 4-1 deficit to tie it at 4.

Robin Ventura led off the ninth with a single. With one out, Rey Ordonez singled, then Johnson walked Melvin Mora to load the bases and bring on Chouinard.

Third baseman Matt Williams made a diving stop, his second of the game, on Rickey Henderson’s grounder, and threw home to force out Ventura.

But Alfonzo hit Chouinard’s 3-1 pitch just inside the left field foul pole for the grand slam.

Johnson, whose postseason record fell to 2-6, gave up seven runs on eight hits. Turk Wendell pitched one inning and was the winner.

The Mets wasted little time in denting Johnson’s intimidating aura as Alfonzo, who had hit a first-inning homer to ignite the wild-card-clinching victory in Cincinnati on Monday night, hit another with one out in the first.

Johnson had two strikes on the New York second baseman when he left a fastball over the middle of the plate, and Alfonzo hammered it 422 feet into the left-center-field seats as the Big Unit angrily cussed at himself on the mound.

Johnson had reason to cuss some more when John Olerud and Mike Piazza followed with singles, but he struck out Benny Agbayani and Ventura to keep it at 1-0 until the third, when Rickey Henderson walked and Olerud laced a 381-foot homer to right.

It was the first homer Johnson had given up to a left-handed hitter in 54 2/3 postseason innings and the first to a left-handed hitter since Jim Edmonds of the Angels hit two off him on Sept. 23, 1977.

The Diamondbacks, who had wasted a two-out double by Luis Gonzalez in the first and a one-out single by Steve Finley in the second, made it 3-1 in the bottom of the third when Tony Womack tripled to left-center and scored on Jay Bell’s ensuing fly to center.

The Mets, however, built a three-run lead again in the fourth when Ventura, another left-handed hitter who had said of Johnson before the game that “all you can do is go up and take your best hacks and hope you get your bat on it,” doubled down the right-field line, moved to third on Shawon Dunston’s bunt single and scored on Rey Ordonez’s squeeze bunt.

The Diamondbacks were down 4-1 to a pitcher who was 5-0 with a 1.61 earned-run average over his last eight starts of a 12-8 season, but the 34-year-old Yoshii was unable to hold his lead.

Erubiel Durazo homered with one out in the fourth to make it 4-2, and Gonzalez followed Bell’s single with a 452-foot bomb to right in the sixth to tie the score and ultimately bring on Dennis Cook to close out the inning and maintain the tie through the seventh, an inning in which Johnson, a .124 hitter during the regular season and 0 for 4 with four strikeouts in his postseason plate appearances before this game, laced a one-out double only to run himself out of a possible tiebreaking run. He forgot there was only one out on Womack’s ensuing fly to left and was doubled off second as he trotted toward third.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.