Meet the October Mets
Weekend Fix: Sunday, October 6
☀️ Good Morning:
Playoff pumpkins and Ghost Forks, meet the October Mets, a team fans of the lovable losers barely recognize.
Disguised as a weak-hitting lineup through the beginning of critical games, the Mets have become late-inning bullies. They turned a shutout through seven innings on Monday into eight runs, a shutout through eight innings on Thursday into four runs and a shutout through seven innings on Saturday into six runs.
They are only the third team in National League history to win back-to-back playoff games when trailing in the 8th inning or later (ironically, joining the 1980 Phillies and 1999 Mets).
Zack Wheeler pitched as a comic book villain with heavy shadows acting like a cape on his back early in the game, further obfuscating a fastball that exploded towards the plate at 98 mph, three ticks higher than his season average, and faster than any pitch the Mets saw him throw the last time they faced each other two weeks ago.
He was literally un-hittable, forcing the Mets to swing at pitches out of the strike zone while seemingly casting a spell on the home plate umpire to gain favorable calls.
There are probably 47 unique stats for how dominant Wheeler was in Game 1 (I will share a few in a bit), and they will all be cited when some hot-shot hurler eventually pitches a better postseason game, maybe 30 or 40 years from now, but none of them matter to the Phillies this morning, not after they lost a 1–0 lead in the eighth inning.
The nightmare scenario unfolded for the NL East champs. They got an epic performance by their ace pitcher, in front of a frenzied, inebriated crowd, and the offense went idle like the Liberty Bell, the fans eventually as quiet. If Wheeler played the villain by threatening the future of Gotham to start the game, the bullpen played the bumbling sidekicks incapable of overcoming the good guys.
It sets up a tense Sunday for the home team with the possibility they could be on the brink of elimination before the Mets have even thrown a pitch at Citi Field.
How are things going in Philly right now?
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🎰 Big Innings
The Mets play offense like they shop at Costco. No need to stop at the local grocery store to grab a few small things, or drive in a couple of runs in the early innings, they can buy in bulk at the last minute.
Not only are the Mets putting up crooked numbers, but they are doing so in the most clutch situations, against some of the game’s best relievers. Whether it be elite closers like Raisel Iglesias and Devin Williams, or a Phillies set-up duo that pitched to a combined 2.02 ERA this season, it doesn’t seem to matter.
“Our win probability charts are going viral right now,” Reed Garrett deadpanned after the game.
TWO STRIKES: Most impressive about Saturday’s five-run eighth inning was the approach with two strikes. Philadelphia’s bullpen fired 18 two-strike pitches during that frame, the Mets fouled off nine of them (seven by Jose Iglesias in an epic 10-pitch at-bat that ended in a single), and turned four of them into hits.
Down 1–0 with one measly hit on the scoreboard, Jeff Hoffman and Matt Strahm got ahead on each of the first six batters they faced, earning 0–2 counts on Francisco Lindor, who walked, Mark Vientos, who singled, Brandon Nimmo, who singled, and Pete Alonso, who hit a sacrifice fly.
As per usual, Lindor found himself in the middle of a rally. After Francisco Álvarez led off the inning with a hit, the captain worked a seven-pitch walk against a reliever (Hoffman) who he entered the day 0–4 with three strikeouts against. That pushed the tying run into scoring position with no outs, tightening the screws on the bullpen.
Vientos delivered the hit his teammates (and Mets fans) had been waiting for all day, an RBI single to tie the game.
A lineup that went 1-for-21 over the first seven innings, started a Conga line of hits that turned a tense one-run game into a 5–1 laugher.
It was a day of swing and miss, as we will talk about next, but in the eighth inning, the Mets tightened their focus, while the Phillies lost their command, and it created an explosion of offense.
“Really good at-bats against some elite arms,” manager Carlos Mendoza said after the game, via SNY. “This is something we’ve done throughout the year. When we’re clicking as a team offensively, these are the things we do. We put the ball in play, use all fields, and we’re not thinking too big.”
🤯 Look out for Game 5
We have a lot of baseball in front of us. Who knows how the next few days will unfold. A Phillies win tonight and they are one Aaron Nola start away from taking the series lead. But if there’s one thing we can say for certain: the Mets would be best to close out this series before needing to steal another game from Zack Wheeler.
I said I would share some stats about his performance, not because we need to gush about it, but to show both how incredible it was the Mets won this game, and how daunting the task might be if they face him again, especially if they don’t clean up their approach.
Velocity: Wheeler threw 1 pitch, 1 pitch (!), faster than 98 mph out of the 3,134 he tossed this season. He threw 10 such pitches on Saturday.
Whiffs: Wheeler induced 30 swinging strikes, the third most in a postseason game in the pitch tracking era (since 2008). No Phillies pitcher has ever had more than 27 whiffs, in any type of game, since they started getting tracked in 2008. And 30 swing and misses are the most against the Mets in the tracking era, beating out Max Scherzer’s 17-strikeout no-hitter in 2015 (among others), as noted by Tim Britton of The Athletic.
Length: Wheeler’s 111 pitches were the most thrown in a postseason game in four years, when Tyler Glasnow tossed 112 in Game 1 of the 2020 World Series.
Clearly, Wheeler was on his game, but the Mets also helped him out. Just look at some of these pitches the Mets chased yesterday. Mark Vientos and Tyrone Taylor swung at two pitches that nearly hit them!
However, just as the Amazins helped Wheeler by chasing pitches out of the zone, the Phillies also made life easier on the Mets.
“Obviously, they’re going to bury stuff and try to get us to chase as much as possible,” Harper said of New York’s approach, via The Athletic. “They have really good pitching. But we got really good hitters in here. We just have to bear down and understand that we can do it.”
Both teams complained about the shadows, which will play a factor for the remainder of this series. When it’s hard to see and pitchers are throwing out of the strike zone and hitters are pressing to do damage in a big game, it leads to a lot of swing and miss.
“I don’t know if I was seeing much. It was hard to see the baseball, for sure,” Vientos said of the shadows. “But both teams were dealing with it. It’s not something that we’re going to be like, ‘Man, we can’t see,’ and just toss our bats to the side. It’s something we have to deal with. Both teams are dealing with it.”
🧩 Piecing it together
Kodai Senga has a history of struggling in the first inning, since his very first game with the Mets. His career 4.20 ERA in the opening frame is by far the worst of any inning. It was a lot to ask a pitcher coming off injury to be on his game from the jump, which posed a potential problem when that was Senga’s entire assignment on Saturday.
When Kyle Schwarber sent the third pitch Senga tossed into the right-field stands, it didn’t look like the plan was going to work. That pitch was significant for multiple reasons: Not only did it provide the only run either team would score through the first seven innings, it represented a rare mistake by either side of throwing something straight in the strike zone.
When we last saw Senga, he relied mostly on a four-seamer, cutter and forkball, only occasionally mixing in a sweeper, slider or curveball. On Saturday, he brought his entire repertoire to the mound, even though he knew he would only face the Phillies lineup one time through. The idea was to limit his fastballs, save that first batter.
Most exciting, his forkball looked as deadly as ever:
🐷 PIGGYBACK TIME: On Saturday morning, I discussed the merits of piggybacking Senga with Tylor Megill. I like the idea of David Peterson as an added lefty out of the bullpen in late situations. And I thought Megill would work out well, especially if the Phillies played their lefty-facing lineup. Not to mention, Megill has had success against Schwarber (1–9), Harper (2–12, 5 strikeouts) and Turner (2–6).
Once Rob Thomson stuck with his regular, righty-facing lineup (playing the lefty Stott over the righty Sosa and the lefty Marsh over the righty Wilson), bringing in Peterson made more sense.
Peterson also offered something that Megill doesn’t: a decent changeup.
💨 MAKE IT SLOW or MAKE IT SPIN: As much as they can help it, the Mets are going to force the Phillies to beat them without the aid of fastballs. Mendoza did a masterful job matching Wheeler with a plethora of arms, using Senga to get through the order once, Peterson 1.5 times and turning to Reed Garrett as a righty-favored match-up against the likes of Castellanos, Bohm and Realmuto for two more innings, before Phil Maton and Ryne Stanek closed it out.
As I said in the chat, don’t get too down on Maton because of his performance against the Brewers. He is a key piece in this series as someone who has handled the top hitters in the lineup (Schwarber, Turner and Harper are a combined 1-12 against him, including Harper’s hit last night), and who doesn’t risk throwing a straight fastball in a bad spot, relying on a cutter, curveball and sweeper.
While the Mets went 1-21 through the first seven innings against Wheeler, their bullpen held the Phillies hitless for 19 straight batters in the middle innings. Look at the names of relievers who did it. This is a masterclass of how to build a bullpen by David Stearns.
NEXT FOR SENGA: Taking a wider lends view, two relatively strong innings from Senga allow for him to be available for even more length in a possible Game 5, and hopefully beyond.
🤓 Where was that pitch?
As if facing Zack Wheeler wasn’t hard enough, it became basically impossible the way the home plate umpire was calling balls and strikes.
Andy Fletcher is an interesting choice for a playoff game. He ranks 77th of the 90 umpires ranked on Umpire Scorecards in terms of accuracy. Entering last night’s game, over the past two years, the Phillies were 3–1 with him behind the plate, the Mets 2–2, two records that would have really started to tilt towards Philly had their bullpen not bailed him out.
If you’ve read this newsletter, you know I write about the umpires about as often as I write about the New York Philharmonic. But the inconsistency was so blatant last night, I couldn’t completely overlook it.
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✍️ LINEUP CARD: Jose Iglesias didn’t bat fifth over the entire season until Thursday’s winner-take-all-game in Milwaukee. He returned to that spot on Saturday, going hitless in his first three at-bats (0–7 overall in the five hole at that point), grounding into an early double play. We will see if Mendoza changes things up or sticks with a winning recipe from the past two games. Iglesias finally found his way in the eighth with his epic 10-pitch at bat.
👷♂️ BACK TO WORK: Jeff McNeil is hoping he can be a part of this magical run. He took a red-eye from California (after welcoming his second child) so he could rejoin the team in Philly. If he can ramp things up, and the Mets keep winning, it’s possible he could be available in time for the NLCS.
If you don’t want to upset the apple cart by keeping Iglesias at second, we almost saw a scenario where McNeil could be useful in the future in last night’s game. In the seventh inning, with Jesse Winker at first, Tyrone Taylor had a chance to move him into scoring position with a hit, bringing Francisco Álvarez to the plate. Had Taylor come through, having a left-handed pinch-hitter who makes contact and can dunk in a run would have been nice.
🗓️ UP NEXT: The Phillies hand the ball to Cristopher Sánchez in a ballpark where he owns a 2.21 ERA over 110 innings this season, hoping he can even the series for Aaron Nola on Tuesday.
The Mets have seen a lot of Sánchez, catching him twice in September, as well as once back in May. They have yet to completely solve him, losing all three games he started, two of them at Citi Field. The last time they faced him at Citizens Bank Park (September 15), he threw seven innings of one-run ball, striking out seven.
The Phillies have also seen a lot of Luis Severino, facing him in back-to-back starts in late September. Sevy put up similar lines in those games, tossing six innings and allowing three runs in each.
🕷️ Find headlines for all of your favorite teams at SportSpyder, the number one source for sports news links.
◾️ Shohei Ohtani tomahawked a three-run homer in his second ever postseason at-bat and the Dodgers overcame a 3–0 first-inning deficit to win 7–5. It was their first postseason win in two years.
◾️ The Yankees and Royals exchanged leads a record five times before the Bombers came out victorious, 6–5.
◾️ The Guardians put up a touchdown in taking Game 1 over the Tigers, 7–0.
🔗 A test of their Met-tle: New York takes NLDS Opener, by Michael Baumann, FanGraphs: “I suppose coming back from a 1-0 deficit is child’s play to a team that, last time out, overturned a 2-0 ninth-inning deficit against one of the best closers in the league. A team that clinched its playoff berth with a six-run eighth inning in Atlanta, coughed that lead up, then took it back for good an inning later. A team that, on August 28, was just five games over .500, with a 13.1% chance of making the playoffs.”
🔗 How the Mets stormed back against Phillies: Anatomy of another crazy inning, by Will Sammon, The Athletic ($): “Over the last couple of weeks, Lindor has repeated a mantra that he first heard Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns tell the team during a meeting: You don’t have to be The Guy — just be yourself. How Lindor interpreted that: Trust the next guy, too. It’s a twist on the old cliché of not trying to do too much. When it comes to trying to not do too much, Lindor is a master at ending up doing plenty.”
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It all feels like a dream, especially after reading the recap. I am surprised you didn’t file from London! The 2024 Mets: no panic, just stick to the plan. Hat tip to Mendy for keeping these guys focused. The umpiring chart is insane and I hope MLB removes this guy for the next round. Let’s Go Mets!
I don't comment much on these all that often, but I've been a subscriber since the beginning and I read the newsletter every single day and listen to the pod as well. Love the thoughtful analysis from you guys day in and day out. I know it must be a ton of work. Appreciate you guys! Last, but not least, LET'S GO METS!