You have to understand a couple of things.
First off, I’ve been waiting to go to a playoff game for six years. Second, I was waiting all season to see Max Scherzer pitch in person as a Met. So you could imagine how pumped I was for tonight, even taking into account everything that happened in the last weekend of the season against Atlanta, and the last month of the season against the Cubs, Nationals, and Marlins. Even though it was October 7th and not October 12th, this was going to be the night it all came together. All the circles were converging, all the stones of Thanos were going to be on my fingers. I was ready.
But between that last month and the task ahead, having to face the Yu Darivsh and Blake Snell (with Joe Musgrove waiting for us in a potential deciding game), I was also aware of how Friday night could have easily gone sideways. I think everyone else was too. I mean, people were excited, but I got the general sense from the crowd at Citi Field that there was a little uneasiness, a little apprehension. I’m not sure the crowd was at full throat tonight. Maybe 9/10ths throat? 19/20ths? Whatever fraction of throat you want to surmise to be close enough to full to make noise, but not quite there to signify that “hey, you guys still have to show us something.” There was still a crescendo that led up to a first pitch where we were ready to get there … all the way there … with a first pitch strike.
That first pitch was a looping hit to the outfield.
The fourth batter, Josh Bell, responded to the very Chipper like refrain of “SWING THE BAT, JOSH!” by swinging said bat and launching a ball to the heavens for a 2-0 Padres lead.
The eighth batter, Trent Grisham, responded to cries of “you’re hitting .184? Maybe baseball isn’t for you!” by hitting a home run of his own to make it 3-0 in the second inning. (Same guy by the way … and no, it wasn’t me.)
It was enough to keep the crowd from getting to that realm of “full throat”. The closest we came in the early innings was to boo celebrity Padres fan Emma Stone.
There was enough complaints about Adrian Johnson’s strike zone being inconsistent to let me know that I wasn’t crazy for thinking that Mets batters were getting squeezed even from my very suspect vantage point of section 524 row 16. But those same Mets batters didn’t do themselves any favors by strranding runners on third in both the first and second innings, and lifting everything harmlessly in the air against Darvish. After two innings it was 3-0, and at that point, it seemed … well I don’t want to say it seemed over, but the crowd was never able to get to full throat, try as we may to get going some haunting chants of “DAAAAAR-VIIIIIIISH”. The third inning rolled around and even with Max Scherzer finding some footing, it didn’t seem like a 3-0 lead that the Mets could come back from. It seemed more like a 3-0 lead that Connor Gillaspie had just given the other team.
So the fifth inning comes, and I’m getting a severe contact high from the smell of weed that permeated the top three rows as if Ron Gardenhire was batting against Marty Bystrom at Shea Stadium. So I had to go get something else to eat. So as I’m going down the stairs, the turntable stylings of someone named DJ J Star blared over the public address (which is why that one unnamed player told the Athletic that playing at Citi Field was like playing in a nightclub). He led off his fifth inning mix, for some reason, with Queen’s “We Are The Champions”, which is certainly a choice in the first game of the playoffs. If you want to call what happened in the top of the 5th a karmic storm after that, nobody in their right or wrong minds would argue with you.
Even walking through the corridors, you could tell that something bad was happening. After a quick peek to see that there were runners on second and third, I heard a bat crack, a bunch of groans, and a bag of trail mix that contained the following:
“F**K YOU SCHERZER!!!”
“FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS DOWN THE DRAIN!!!”
“YOU SUCK SCHERZER YOU BUM!!!”
Silly me for thinking “oh no, Profar got a two run single.” I shouldn’t have been so pessimistic, as it was much worse than that. It was a three run homer by the aforementioned Jurickson Profar. And then while on the Utopia bagels line, another bat crack, and another round of groans. That sounded, felt, and smelt like 7-0 Padres. Sure enough, Manny Machado cracked a solo HR that signaled the end of Scherzer’s night, and perhaps the end of his season. It was then that Mets fans actually did get to full throat. You could hear the boos all the way from Tom Glavine’s locker in September of 2007.
Max Scherzer says nothing physical affected him in this start, oblique or otherwise. He wasn't getting his usual ride on his fastball and he's not sure why.
But Scherzer added: "If I get another shot to pitch, I know what I need to do."
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) October 8, 2022
The rest of the game was an exercise in “because the schedule says so”. Eduardo Escobar hit his first postseason home run, I buried myself in my phone for a 20 minute stretch that encompassed a Mark Canha at-bat, and irony of ironies: the bullpen that everyone feared was actually just fine. It was a bullpen effort that included David Peterson, who one surmised would never pitch again this season after a bad outing in early September, and Mychal Givens, who everyone surmised would be a DFA candidate. But that seems hollow, as the Padres did exactly what the Braves did one week ago: damage the Mets’ central nervous system. They beat the Mets by turning their strength into a weakness. They turned the Mets’ vaunted rotation into chumps, and in the process silenced a lineup that once grinded pitchers until they broke. On Friday, besides the successful return of Starling Marte and a 20 minute at-bat from Mark Canha that ended in an infield pop-up, the lineup was simply broken.
(Oh, and did I mention that it was raining when Francisco Alvarez made the final out? The baseball gods were obviously laughing down crying.)
The Mets will ask Jacob deGrom to save the season on Saturday. Any other circumstance, any other time, I’d be confident that the Mets would take this series to Sunday. But considering how mortal that the two aces have looked … the two pillars of everything that was supposed to go right this season … I can’t sit here and say “we got ’em right where we want them. The Mets, who have had trouble against lefties all season, get to face Snell, who in his last four starts has pitched to an ERA of 0.72, an opponents average of .118, and an OPS against of .411 in 25 innings.
I’m not making any predictions as to what is going to happen in Game 2. I can only tell you what I feel. What I feel at this very moment, and perhaps I’m twisted because I was present for Game 1, is that this series feels like it’s over. The Mets, who have shown all year that they don’t quit or back down, will have one more chance to do battle with the 450 lb beast named Adversity, weaned on the steroids of doubt which grew from the seeds of a so-called “easy schedule” in September. But adversity has kicked my ass enough to make me feel like it’s over.
These Mets … have one last chance to prove me wrong. Or be branded once again, this time as “those &*@#$^ bums”
Today’s Hate List
DJ J Star
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
