Mets didn’t play like a 101-win team in stinker vs. Padres

The crowd was primed for playoff baseball. The Mets did not look ready.

“Let’s Go Mets,” chants rang out before the introductions. There’s nothing better than postseason baseball in New York, even a wild card preliminary, and ever hopeful Mets fans clearly were ready to rock. But the home team did not answer the call in a 7-1 loss to the Padres in Game 1.

The thrill lasted until Max Scherzer’s former Nationals teammate, Josh Bell, laid into a meaty pitch as the fourth batter of the game, drilling one the opposite way over the left-field wall for a two-run lead, an early omen for an ugly evening.

Things did not get better from there. The Mets put a few guys on base in the first couple of innings against Padres ace and Mets killer Yu Darvish, and stole seemingly at will (as Joel Sherman predicted they would), but that old bugaboo crept back into their game. Like past Mets teams, they could not deliver an RBI hit, or even a productive out when needed, not that it’s easy against perhaps the game’s only crafty righty (he struck out Luis Guillorme on a 67-mph curveball).

In the first two innings, the Mets moved a runner to third with only one out, only for Pete Alonso and Eduardo Escobar to whiff when only a fly ball was needed. Alonso, in his first two bats, took a called strike right down the middle, then on another strikeout he accidentally threw his bat about 150 feet into the netting on the third-base side.

Max Scherzer looks down to the ground after giving up a two-run homer to Josh Bell (inset) in the first inning of the Mets' 7-1 Game 1 loss to the Padres.
Max Scherzer looks down to the ground after giving up a two-run homer to Josh Bell (inset) in the first inning of the Mets’ 7-1 Game 1 loss to the Padres.
Corey Sipkin (2)

Both times, the NL RBI king repaired to the dugout shaking his head. It was too early for snapping the wood over his knee, but we know he is capable.

As a unit, the Mets looked a lot like the Mets of the last couple of years, before they made so many great improvements. By the fourth inning, understandably, the cheers turned to boos. The Mets use music to enhance the show as well as any team, but about that time the Mets had a DJ playing Queen’s “We are the Champions,” broadcast up on the big screen. That seemed premature.

And like that, the Mets, 101-game winners in the regular season, are a game from elimination at the hands of the Padres, one of five teams never to win a World Series in their current location. Don’t knock them, though.

A dejected Pete Alonso walks to the dugout after striking out in the fourth inning of the Mets' Game 1 loss.
A dejected Pete Alonso walks to the dugout after striking out in the fourth inning of the Mets’ Game 1 loss.
N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg

Nobody tries harder than the Padres, possibly the only team in baseball that outspends its revenue (not counting the Marlins, who have no revenue). The Padres laid out $232 million, the sixth most in baseball, and traded half the top dogs in their ultra-rich farm system to try to reverse their long history of frustration — more frustrating than our local nine.

So give them credit. Today the mid-market team boasts four superstars, including Darvish, a playoff veteran and ace on a roll who held the Mets down. Darvish is a fantastic pitcher with an amazing arsenal. But the Mets caught him a year too early. Next season, once the 15-second pitch clock is installed, he will have a real challenge.

This game was billed as a matchup of aces, but only one of them performed to form. Like the team, Scherzer was outstanding in the regular season. But the money pitcher brought in for just such an occasion looked a tad overpriced on this day. Not sure about you, but I was imaging a record $43.33 million being flushed down the toilet about the time Manny Machado sent a rocket of a home run out to left field to make it 7-zip. That shot was clocked at 110.5 mph. It seemed faster.

Buck Showalter's team now in a win-or-go-home situation.
Buck Showalter’s team now in a win-or-go-home situation.
N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelber

Scherzer, the highest-salaried player in baseball history, was absolutely torched. Machado’s home run for the Padres’ fourth of the game in 4 ²/₃ innings against Scherzer, who may still be feeling effects from the oblique strain that cost him starts earlier. He hasn’t admitted it, but there’s word he’s struggling to throw his patented cutter.

By the end of fifth inning, when Trevor May struck out Bell, the boos grew. Mets fans were calculating, of course, that they shouldn’t have even been in this position, and wouldn’t have been had they just won one game against the Cubs in Citi Field last month, or one at Atlanta in a lost weekend that looked like the low point of otherwise fine season.

Until Friday night, that is. The Mets’ first playoff game in six years represented one of their worst performances of a generally excellent season.

Their small ball was no match for the Padres, who kept hammering away. Following Bell’s homer came a solo shot by Trent Grisham in the second that made it 3-0 and a three-run homer lined into the left-field corner by leadoff man Jurickson Profar, the dagger at 6-0.

It’s uncertain why Scherzer was allowed to keep going at that point, but two batters later, Machado homered — a liner to left that just kept going and going. One more night like this, and the Mets will be going, going gone, as well.

source: nypost.com