Manaea on a mission

Morning Dose: Wednesday, October 9

☀️ Good Morning:

Yesterday was for Mets fans.

As much as Tuesday was about the business at hand, Game 3, it was also a celebration of sorts.

An opportunity for Mets fans to come together and acknowledge the previous week’s miracles, events they had experienced individually, on their TV sets and through Howie Rose’s voice on the car radio, moments they had savored with an extra drink in their den or countless social media posts. On Tuesday, they could finally revel together, the proper way, at Citi Field, shoulder to shoulder, standing at every big moment, clapping, yelling, giving high fives. 

At a time when the front page of the newspaper likes to tell us we are more divided than ever, it was Mets fans, from red counties in Long Island and blue towns in Connecticut, making their pilgrimage, united by something purely American, baseball. 

Because no matter where you are from, which tax form you file, or ballot-box button you push, when you pull a blue cap with an interlocking NY over your head and find your seat at Citi Field, for those three hours, you belong to a special community, distracted from the real problems of the world, the way we used to distract ourselves before cell phones and memes took over our lives. 

The Mets gave us that on Tuesday, perhaps only a beginning. With one more win, they advance to the NLCS in a season many thought would end with a losing record.

In a best-of-five series, Game 3 is pivotal (stats via MLB and The Athletic):

• In a 1–1 series, like this one was, the Game 3 winner has gone on to win the series 45 of 62 times.

• Under the current 2–2–1, teams leading 2–1, with Game 4 at home, have won the series 25 of 31 times.

• Of those 25 series wins, 18 were clinched in Game 4.

• The Mets, as a franchise, have never lost a series in which they split Games 1 and 2 of a best-of-five on the road (four times).

• And the Phillies have never won a series in which they lost Game 1 (seven times).

If that’s not enough data for you, as pointed out by MLB, the Mets and Phillies have played each other 1,000 times since July 1966, and New York has now won 501 games, Philadelphia 500.

The team who advances to the NLCS will have essentially won a best-of-1000 series by taking the first postseason match-up in the history of these two franchises.

☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!

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Box Score

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❤️ Manaea on a mission

When Sean Manaea left the mound in the eighth inning on Tuesday, the crowd was waiting for him with open arms, as if he was walking into a giant hug of appreciation for the work he had done to keep the Phillies off the scoreboard for 7+ innings in a must-win playoff game.

Little did everyone know at the time, the warm embrace was important for multiple reasons.

Before Manaea reached the dugout steps, he looked to the sky and blew a kiss.

“That was for my aunt,” he told reporters after the game. “Just got a message that she passed away early this morning. That game was for her.” 

In an emotional start for Manaea that also allowed him to exorcise some professional demons from a nightmare performance against the Phillies two Octobers ago, he couldn’t have been better.

His seven-inning, one-run performance was reminiscent of Bobby Jones’ complete-game shutout on the same date in 2000. Manaea adds his name to Mets’ postseason lore.

🔷 How did he do it?

Longtime readers are familiar with the Statcast metrics we have used to explain a pitcher’s effectiveness, from spin rate to induced vertical break.

What we are seeing from Sean Manaea is a lesson in arm angle and deception. It’s been well chronicled now. After watching Chris Sale back in July, Manaea adjusted his mechanics to deliver the pitch across his body, a motion that he perfects by warming up from the opposite mound as the catcher in the bullpen.

What it does is create an arm angle unlike most left-handers in baseball.

via Baseball Savant

Ask Bryce Harper how hard it is to hit a pitch that is coming from what appears like from behind his own back. Harper looked like he had no chance against Manaea, grounding out weakly on two 0–2 pitches in his first two at-bats, before striking out on three pitches in their final match-up of the night.

Since adjusting his attack angle, left-handed batters are hitting .213 against Manaea with a 27.4% whiff rate.

⚾️ Adding to his arm angle, he also adjusted the grip on his changeup, turning a pitch that opposing righties were tattooing to an expected slugging percentage of .720 in July to one that is inducing soft contact and whiffs.

As Tim Britton pointed out in the moment, Manaea threw four left-on-left changeups in the sixth inning against Schwarber and Harper, after throwing only one such pitch to lefties since the All-Star break.

It was in the sixth when Manaea faced his greatest challenge of the night. After a mound visit, he changes his approach, the theme of his wonderful season, by throwing changeups and sweepers, soft and slow, to Harper, catching the All-Star slugger overzealous with his swing.

“I think that's just the situation, when he’s trying to do too much,” Thomson said of Harper’s at-bat. “Trying to get the club – put the club on his shoulders.”

After striking out Harper, he got Castellanos to line into a double play to end the inning and to allow him to let out a season’s worth of emotion.

Manaea went on to record the next five outs on 10 pitches. When it felt like he might be tiring, needing help in facing the Phillies’ lineup for the third time, his performance somehow appeared effortless, allowing him to extend himself into the eighth inning, saving the bullpen.  

Before we talk about anything else, let’s take a minute to acknowledge what has happened:

• The Mets avoided all of the big-ticket free agents to sign a reliever turned starter to a prove-it deal (and he wasn’t the the only one);

• They used their expertise to perfect his pitch mix and mechanics, helping him make adjustments throughout the season;

• He ended up out-pitching the $172 million Aaron Nola in a playoff game.

Meet the David Stearns Mets.

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🤺 Beating Nola

Baseball is a game of adjustments.

I talked about how the Mets might approach Aaron Nola in yesterday’s newsletter. I discussed making him earn strikes, taking a patient approach to avoid chasing his deadly curveball. I talked about his propensity to give up home runs, and how Pete Alonso has owned him.

At least I had part of that right: Alonso took Nola deep again, but New York decided to use an aggressive approach against Nola, attacking anything hard over the plate.

While that led to a few hard-hit balls, including the home run by Alonso, it also kept his pitch count down. By the fifth inning, it felt like he was only getting stronger, striking out the side.

But the Mets didn’t blink.

In the sixth, Mark Vientos took an eight-pitch at bat and rocketed a single into left field. Brandon Nimmo watched two knuckle curves land outside of the strike zone and walked on seven pitches.

And as impressive as Alonso’s home run was in the second inning, his at-bat against Nola in the sixth is the true sign he has found his way after slumping down the stretch. Nola had aa new game plan, throwing sinkers down and in to try to offset a leaning Alonso, but the slugger wanted nothing to do with that; instead of chasing, giving in and swinging at a pitch he didn’t like, he forced Nola to throw strikes in tough areas and earned the walk.

👉 GOING THE OTHER WAY: All three of Alonso’s postseason home runs have now sailed over the right-field fence. He only had four such homers during the regular season.

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⚾️ Little Things

Gavin Rossdale once sang, “It’s the little things that kill.”

It’s the little things that win playoff baseball games, too.

The Mets got a great performance from their starter, but they also played defense behind him in a way that nobody could have imagined when they were kicking the ball all over the field back in May.

Whether it was Mark Vientos ranging to his right and making long throws to first, Alonso with perfect footwork to secure an out, Francisco Lindor scooping balls up the middle, or Tyrone Taylor barehanding a ball in the gap to nail Alec Bohm, the defense showed up when the game was close.

🔷 MAKE ‘EM COUNT: Just as they did in Game 1, recording hits on multiple two-strike counts, whenever it seemed like the Phillies were ready to escape trouble, the Mets came through.

The Amazins scored six of their seven runs with two outs on Tuesday.

In too many seasons of recent memory, with the bases loaded and nobody out, the Mets would have squandered the opportunity. It looked like they might even do it last night in the sixth. But not this team.

After failing to convert with the first two hitters, Starling Marte delivered a clutch, two-out hit to give his team some breathing room, doubling a 2–0 lead to 4–0. Jose Iglesias would do the same in the next inning, pushing the score to 6–0.

The Mets are hitting .340 with an .865 OPS with runners in scoring position this postseason.

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🍂 FALL REHAB: With Hurricane Milton approaching Florida, the Mets have petitioned MLB to allow Jeff McNeil to appear in Arizona Fall League games, so he can see live pitching before potentially returning for the NLCS.

🗓️ UP NEXT: The Phillies turn to left-hander Ranger Suárez (12–8, 3.46) to save their season against Jose Quintana, who has been as steady as any starter in baseball over the past month.

Suárez has been a mystery to the Mets this season, allowing two runs or less in each of his three starts against them. However, he’s not known for length. He only pitched into the sixth inning in one of those games and hasn’t pitched into the seventh since May.

• New York hitters have particularly struggled against Suárez’ sinker and curveball, hitting below .200 against both, with a 32.4% whiff rate against his breaking ball. They have fared best against his four-seamer, with three hits, including a double.

• Both Brandon Nimmo and Mark Vientos have had fits against Suárez this year, a combined 1–18, but Jose Iglesias has four hits in six at-bats.

It will be interesting to see which version of Suárez takes the mound on Wednesday: the one who looked like a Cy Young candidate to start the season; the one who struggled after being placed on the IL with back soreness and pitched to a 5.74 ERA over his last seven starts; or, the postseason version whose 1.62 ERA in nine career postseason appearances (seven starts), ranks fifth lowest all time (minimum five starts).

⚾️ BULLPEN: Manaea’s performance in Game 3 allowed the bullpen to gain important rest. Edwin Díaz has now only pitched once in the past five days.

Phillies manager Rob Thomson indicated Cristopher Sánchez would be a more likely candidate as an extra arm out of the bullpen than Zack Wheeler, who could pitch in a unique situation, but would otherwise be held back for a potential Game 5.

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◾️ The Padres built an early 6–1 lead over the Dodgers, before Teoscar Hernández hit a grand slam to make it 6–5 in the third. LA would only get one more hit the rest of the way, as San Diego took a commanding 2–1 series lead.

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🔗 Phillies on the brink: They know it. The Mets smell it. Their legacy is on the line, by Jayson Stark, The Athletic ($): “To watch these teams now, it’s amazing how irrelevant it feels that the Phillies dominated the NL East practically from start to finish … while the Mets didn’t even scramble into this tournament until the day after the previously scheduled end of the regular season. Now it’s the Mets who have That Look. And the Phillies are playing like a team that flipped the cruise-control switch on the World Series Express three months ago — and forgot to turn it off.”

🔗 Mets’ Kodai Senga is ready to pitch with season on line. But is his stuff back? by Eno Sarris, The Athletic ($): “Senga was missing an important amount of velocity, as well as the touch and feel on his cutter. Considering he didn’t even have a rehab stint, it’s possible he won’t fit the normal distribution of pitchers returning from injury and will gain more than previous pitchers have after their first start back. A regular progression from his first outing might get Senga all the way to 60 pitches, and perhaps four innings.”

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