No Hollywood Endings
Morning Dose: Friday, June 6
☀️ GOOD MORNING:
This is the Dodgers when they’re down. They have an NBA roster full of pitchers on the IL. As three Cy-Young-caliber starters nurse injuries, Clayton Kershaw is throwing a few mph behind high-pitch softball, Landon Knack is literally tossing batting practice and their $75 million closer is trying to find his way in a bullpen that features guys Dave Roberts hadn’t even heard of before last week.
They faced a Mets team that has one of the hottest run producers in the sport, the kind that can wreck a series, and a starting rotation that is stingier with runs than the world’s richest man seems to be in passing big beautiful bills.
This is the Dodgers when they’re down. And the Mets couldn’t kick them.
They let two games slip away this week, settling for a split in LA, while winning four of seven in the season series, which sounds pretty good until you consider everything I just noted above.
They say pitching wins championships — the Mets pitched as well as they ever could imagine in a playoff series, the Dodgers the opposite, and the two teams were still only separated by one game. While some celebrate winning a tiebreaker that has about a 5% chance of mattering, the Dodgers proved that even in their weakest moments they can still compete with the Mets.
And of course, of course (!), it was Michael Conforto recording his first hit with runners in scoring position since March 31 to drive in the winning run.
That’s the sad tale.
The flip side is the Mets were a few plays away from taking five (six?) of seven from the team who eliminated them in the NLCS last season and everyone believes will win the World Series again this season. The Dodgers are banged up, but they aren’t the Marlins. They still have the most explosive offense in baseball. As Dodger commentator David Vassegh likes to say, You don’t beat the Dodgers, you survive them. The Mets proved they can hang with them.
⚾️ MEANWHILE IN ATLANTA: The Braves blew a six-run, ninth-inning lead to fall to the Diamondbacks, 11–10. “If you were looking for a rock bottom, this might be it,” old foe and Braves broadcaster Tom Glavine said after the game. Atlanta has lost 11 of 14 and five consecutive series, falling 11.5 games back of your New York Mets.
☕️ Grab your coffee and our latest podcast for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
🍎 ABOUT THAT PLAY
It was going so well. Pete Alonso continued to hit home runs, and so was everyone else. David Peterson was cruising, striking out Shohei Ohtani twice. Mets fans who had escaped sleep to watch the first three games of this series were being rewarded with a sleepy matinee wi… Not so fast.
While a breezy 4–0 lead quickly turned into a one-run game, the Mets entered the eighth with a two-run cushion and Reed Garrett’s 0.68 ERA on the mound. This was their ballgame to win.
I talked about Garrett earlier this week, how he has been flirting with regression, walking too many batters, pitching better at home. Those factors quickly came into play on Thursday. He walked the lead-off hitter and served up an RBI double to Will Smith. Teoscar Hernández flied out, moving Smith to third, setting up a tragic play to tie the game.
On an Andy Pages dribbler, Brett Baty got stuck in-between, not sure if he wanted to throw home, double clutching, before firing a bouncer to home plate, allowing Smith to score despite starting the play nearly parallel to Baty when he initially fielded the ball.
“It’s just a very, very dumb mistake,” Baty said after the game. “It can’t happen in that situation.”
🙋 REMEMBER: It’s easy to focus on poor defense costing the Mets the game, but let’s not forget they benefited from the Dodgers missing two key ground balls in this series, one by Max Muncy and another by Kiké Hernández.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Mets Fix to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.