Mets walk-off thriller helped their own case in playoff hunt filled with watching
The scoreboard high above left field taunted them all night.It teased a dugout full of baseball players whose bats scratched out only one run over most of two days.
It sneered at Sean Manaea, brilliant once again across seven innings, but on the hook for a loss when it was 1-0 for so long.“I was watching,” Manaea admitted of the scoreboard.“I definitely was.”The Dodgers were up in Atlanta, 1-0.
They were up 2-0, then 3-0, then 5-0.We’re inside of two weeks left in the season, and the Dodgers were trying to lend the Mets a hand.
That’s part of a playoff chase, sure: sometimes you have to rely on the kindness of strangers.But eventually you have to help yourself, too.Inning after inning, the Mets couldn’t help themselves.Inning after inning, a Washington Nationals right-hander named Jake Irvin plowed his way through the Mets lineup, same as he had on the Fourth of July, when he’d thrown eight goose eggs at them and won 1-0 when the man playing right field for the Mets now, Jesse Winker, hit a homer off long-departed pitcher Adrian Houser.“We didn’t hit too many hard balls against him,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, and there were 21,694 people in the stands who could back that up as they groaned uneasily; the scoreboard was goading them, too, most of all.
The Mets had an opportunity.They just needed to buy a run, and then another.Mendoza: “We have good players on this team.
They know how to find a way.”They hadn’t found a way Saturday or Sunday in Philadelphia, losing a pair of excruciating games.There hadn’t been a lot of help, either.
The Braves played the Dodgers to a draw across four games.In Phoenix, Brewers manager Pat Murphy opted against using his lights-out closer, Devin Williams, with a two-run 10th inning lead on Sunday.Williams looked furious as he watched from the bullpen.That properly mimicked Mets fans who might’ve angrily snuck a peek at the bottom of the 10th, as the Diamondbacks strung together four singles ...