Buck Showalter has Padres' Joe Musgrove checked for foreign substance
Umpires checking San Diego Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove while playing the New York Mets in the bottom of the 6th inning of NL Wild Card Series Game 3 at Citi Field on Oct. 9, 2022. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Buck Showalter saw it as something he had to do. Joe Musgrove viewed it as the last-ditch effort of a desperate team.
And though both things likely were true, the potential cheating controversy that briefly overtook the Mets’ elimination from the postseason on Sunday ended up doing a good job mirroring their entire season: It started strong, looked as if it would break the Mets’ way and then died on the Citi Field infield while the other team taunted their failure.
There were plenty of reasons for the Mets’ brutal 6-0 loss to the Padres in Game 3 of the NL Wild Card Series on Sunday — their lack of pitching, their feast-or-famine offense, their general power outage — but one thing they can’t pin it on was whatever was on Musgrove’s ear.
Social media Sunday evening erupted with accusations that Musgrove was using a foreign substance in his domination of the Mets, but a thorough check by the umpires said otherwise. Afterward, Showalter, who initiated the challenge, expressed regret at the idea that the check could besmirch Musgrove’s character. Meanwhile, Padres manager Bob Melvin — a longtime friend of Showalter’s — was downright annoyed.
“I love him as a pitcher,” Showalter said of Musgrove, who threw seven innings of one-hit ball. “I always have. That’s the only thing that I feel kind of bad about . . . [But] I’m in charge of doing what’s best for the New York Mets, and if it makes — however it might make me look or whatever — I’m going to do that every time and live with the consequences. There were some pretty obvious reasons why it was necessary.”
There are a few things Showalter can point to. There was the viral photo that began circulating in the second inning of a shiny substance that viewers surmised was Vaseline. There were some shifts in Musgrove’s stuff: After the sixth, he was averaging spin rates more than 100 rpm more than his average on five pitches — with the biggest discrepancy coming on his curveball (an average of 2,905 rpm Sunday compared to his in-season average of 2,722, according to Baseball Savant) and his changeup (2,121 rpm compared to 1,974).
All that can be explained away by the fact that Musgrove has gotten stronger as the season has progressed, along with the natural adrenaline that comes with pitching a playoff game.
By the sixth, with the Mets down four runs and with Musgrove under the 70-pitch mark, Showalter traipsed onto the field, demanding that the umpires check him. Musgrove had his hands examined and his ear rubbed by umpires and was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Musgrove got Eduardo Escobar to ground out weakly, then struck out Tomas Nido, turning to the Mets’ dugout and rubbing his finger under his nose in a derogatory gesture. After getting the third out, Musgrove walked off to reverberating chants of “cheater” and held his hand to his ear in a taunt.
“They were having a lot of trouble scoring on me and I feel like that was his last attempt of trying to push me out of the game,” Musgrove said. “You better be pretty confident that no one on your side is doing anything if you’re going to call out someone on our side.”
Sunday also was a natural progression to what had been a shutdown September for Musgrove, who entered the playoffs having allowed one earned run in 22 innings in his previous four starts. It was for that reason, and others, that Melvin took special exception — yelling at Showalter during the challenge and voicing his displeasure even as his players were celebrating.
“I tend to be a high-road guy and I’m going to, but the problem I have is that Joe Musgrove is a man of character,” Melvin said. “Questioning his character, to me, that’s the part I have a problem . . . I’m here to tell everybody that Joe Musgrove is aboveboard as any pitcher I know.”
But whatever their hurt feelings, the Padres got the last laugh. “Hey Joe,” Manny Machado yelled in the visiting clubhouse, according to MLB.com, “I got the sticky stuff right here.”
And then Machado uncorked the champagne.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
