Carlos Mendoza had pitched the manager’s version of a two-hit shutout Tuesday night, the first game he ever managed in the postseason.
He’d deftly trusted his starting pitcher, Luis Severino, and maxed him out. He got two lights-out bullpen efforts from Jose Butto and Ryne Stanek. He’d cleverly given Jesse Winker the start at DH, then subbed in J.D. Martinez, and together they drove in four runs.
He absolutely outclassed Brewers manager Pat Murphy, also making his playoff debut as a skipper. If Mendoza was playing chess, Murphy was playing Candyland. It was a nice running start to Mendoza’s postseason career.
But baseball is funny this way:
If it’s a game of redeeming features, as we learn time and again, it is also a game of redoubtable vulnerability. Today’s genius is tomorrow’s heinous. Mendoza surely knew this already. He’s been in the game a lot of years. Doesn’t make it any less brutal when you get a bowlful of humble pie for the first time.
“We’ve been knocked down and shown the ability to get back up all year,” Mendoza said Wednesday night, after his Mets surrendered an eighth-inning lead under a barrage of questionable moves by Mendoza and questionable pitches from Phil Maton, dropping a 5-3 game to the Brewers that once again reduces their season to a one-game final exam.
“We got punched today,” Mendoza said. “They’re a good ballclub. We’ll be ready to go.”
Maybe if the Mets had cashed in on several golden opportunities across the first seven innings, they could have built a bigger cushion than the 3-2 advantage they had in the eighth. Maybe if Pete Alonso hadn’t tripped over his bat in the first inning, costing the Mets a run they sure could’ve used later on, things might’ve felt a little different with a two-run difference.
But managers can’t manage that way. They have to deal with what they have. Sean Manaea had given the Mets five solid innings of work, was at 86 pitches, and Mendoza toppled the first domino when he chose to not ask Manaea to do what he’d asked of Severino 24 hours earlier: eat a sixth inning. So instead of needing nine outs from the bullpen, like Tuesday, he needed 12.
He got half of them easily, Reed Garrett and Ryne Stanek going six-up, six-down — with the help of Francisco Alvarez gunning out a would-be base stealer. That got then through seven.
And then came the eighth.
Mendoza had three choices. He could go to Edwin Diaz to face the Brewers’ 1-2-3 hitters — but that would be the only inning he could use Diaz, and then he’d have to figure out the ninth with someone else. He could stick with Stanek, but Stanek has pitched more than one inning just twice all year and only once as a Met — and that doing mop-up work in a 7-0 loss.
Also, Stanek had allowed eight home runs in 55 ¹/₃ innings this year as a Mariner and a Met, and his fastball, while hitting 98 Wednesday, is often delectable to fastball hitters — such as the Brewers’ young star, Jackson Chourio, who’d already homered once and was leading off the eighth.
“I didn’t like that matchup with Chourio,” Mendoza explained later. “He’s a really good fastball hitter.”
Behind door number three was Maton, who in 28 ²/₃ innings as a Met had allowed exactly one home run — and none since July 12.
“We wanted the Maton-Chourio matchup,” Mendoza said, and that’s what he got. And soon Chourio was whistling a two-seamer far over the right-field fence to tie the game at 3. Maton then allowed a blistering single to Blake Perkins. He was momentarily rescued by a double play, then allowed another single, this time to Willy Adames.
Mendoza should have gotten him there. Maton’s curve, usually his most lethal pitch, was off — he was hanging one after another. Then he hung another one to Garrett Mitchell, and suddenly the Mets are in a familiar position, one game from extinction.
That’s not all on Mendoza, but enough of it is. Managers make dozens of choices a game. Never once do they ask themselves: “How can I screw this up the most?”
Sometimes it happens that way anyway. Sometimes, even but a day after rolling nothing but sevens, the dice turn ice cold. Your stack of chips disappears in a blink. Tough job. Especially in October.
