Don’t Cut The Red One

Playoff baseball is like watching a loved one defuse a bomb

— David Murphy (@ByDavidMurphy) October 7, 2022

While David Murphy may have been talking about the Phillies, his tweet was the perfect analogy for Jacob deGrom, and for that matter Adam Ottavino tonight. You couldn’t overestimate deGrom’s do or die start on Saturday, and we were all nervous enough going in. His outing tonight was like watching watching DirecTV at the end of a rainstorm. You know the picture is coming back, but you still have to deal with that rain fade and you hope that you don’t miss a key part of the action. deGrom was blasting away at 100 mph, but then after Francisco Lindor’s home run in the first (which sent the crowd to that full throat moment that they were missing last night), deGrom gave up a rainmaker by Trent Grisham to tie the game. From there, it was in and out, in and out, and then the razor sharp slider came back to deGrom in the 5th after he gave up another tying hit to make it 2-2. He threw the slider to Manny Machado multiple times to get him to help eliminate further damage before getting Josh Bell to end the inning. After a 1-2-3 6th, he would end his night having given up just the two runs on five hits and two walks while striking out eight. While it was dominating at points, this deGrom start was more of the bomb diffusing variety as described above, and it was good enough.

Right after deGrom found his slider, Pete Alonso gave the Mets the lead for good with a bomb of his own in the 5th to make it 3-2. But the key moment in the game came when Buck Showalter, with tomorrow not guaranteed, brought in Edwin Diaz to pitch the 7th. Even though he was brought in to face 8-9-1, which would seem weird, I loved the move. If another reliever came in and gave up a hit to one of those three, then you’d have to bring in Diaz to face Juan Soto in the two hole anyway with that part of the lineup coming up. I’d rather have Diaz start the inning and go two innings than have him enter in the middle of the inning, and with Diaz giving up a single to Austin Nola, that’s exactly what happened. He wound up getting Soto to tap back to him to end the inning.

With Blake Snell having been pulled in the fourth with a high pitch count, the Mets needed to take advantage of the underbelly of the Padres bullpen at some point. That point, thankfully, was the 7th inning against Adrian Morejon and Pierce Johnson (not an adult entertainer). Morejon gave up a single to Lindor, then walked Alonso and Mark Canha to load the bases. Morejon was left in to face batting champion Jeff McNeil, and he smacked a double to make it 5-2. Johnson then came in and gave up a single to Eduardo Escobar and a sac fly to Daniel Vogelbach to make it 7-2, seemingly putting the game away.

At that point, I would have sat Diaz down. Not so much for the two innings, and not so much to save him for tomorrow, but to save him for tomorrow because he had sat for close to 45 minutes and the game was out of hand. But Buck left Diaz in for three batters (two outs) before pulling him for Adam Ottavino with Diaz’s pitch count at 28 pitches. Hopefully that means Diaz is available for Game 3 … I mean, if he wasn’t going to be available tomorrow anyway then you might as well have left him in to finish the 8th. Instead, Ottavino was commissioned for the four out save.

Long day but so worth it !! @Mets live to play another day!Didn't agree W/Buck Showalter's decision to have @sugardiaz39 pitch a 2nd inning once #TheseMets put up a 4 spot to increase lead to 5 over the @Padres I asked him about in the post game…#NLWC #LFGM #MetsTwitter pic.twitter.com/uFjfArPVPD

— Mark Rosenman (SportsTalkNY) (@sportstalkny) October 9, 2022

The last two outs would prove to be almost elusive.

After Ottavino struck out Ha Seong Kim, he hit Grisham with a pitch and walked Nola. Then the fun began after he struck out Jurickson Profar. Ottavino tried to be too careful with his slider to Soto, and all four that he threw to him were balls to walk him. Machado would then get six sliders, but four of them were out of the zone to walk in a run to make it 7-3, and bring Josh Bell up as the tying run. Bell, you might remember from the before times, hit a long homer against Max Scherzer last night.

So the Mets brought in Seth Lugo, which I’m sure they would have rather not done two nights in a row, to face Bell. Lugo threw three out of four curveballs, and the last one would be tapped to Alonso to nail down the final out to tie the series. (For lack of a better place to note this: Brandon Nimmo shone through with three hits and an RBI which made it 2-1 in the 4th.) For all the worry about who is available and who is not, I’m sure that in a do-or-die Game 3, it’ll be all hands on deck. Obviously, I feel much better about Game 3 than I did about Game 2. But I still don’t have a feeling either way. I’m simply happy that there’s a tomorrow … another ball game to watch … another bomb to diffuse.

Don’t cut the red one, Chris.

Today’s Hate List

Karl Ravech …

• Surmised that Edwin Diaz would pitch four innings.
• Called Francisco Lindor “Jose Reyes”.
• Talked about the “interesting decision” to replace Joely Rodriguez with Taijuan Walker, without once mentioning that Rodriguez was injured, making the decision a lot less interesting.
• Informed viewers that Adam Ottavino played for the Yankees in 1920. Obviously he was part of the Yankees: “Cat’s Pajamas” bullpen with Rip Collins and Ernie Shore.
• Also tangientally related to Ravech was ESPN interrupting a key moment in the game when Terrance Gore was pinch running for Darin Ruf with Tomas Nido at the plate to show us a closeup of a guy in the stands mugging for the camera while shoving popcorn in his mouth for the good of his brand marketing.

Can’t we put him on KBO broadcasts at 5:30 in the morning again? He was great in that time slot.