Mets lose to Brewers again but can clinch playoff spot Sunday
New York Mets' Mark Vientos reacts after striking out during the sixth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers on Saturday Credit: AP
MILWAUKEE — Despite everything they have done this week, the Mets have a chance to clinch a playoff spot Sunday.
A 6-0 loss to the Brewers on Saturday night, their third defeat in a row, did not help. But the Diamondbacks, newly their chief competition for the final National League wild-card spot, have assisted the Mets’ efforts by losing five of their past six.
If the Mets win and the Diamondbacks lose on Sunday, the Mets are in the postseason — potential Monday makeup(s) in Atlanta be damned.
Both clubs are one game behind Atlanta, which holds the second of three wild cards. The Mets are in a virtual tie with Arizona, which has played two more games.
“You want to get into the playoffs?” Brandon Nimmo said. “It’s a tough thing to do. You have to overcome the best.”
Manager Carlos Mendoza said: “Not winning the past couple of days is putting us in a difficult situation here. But we gotta come back tomorrow. We have to win a game tomorrow. That’s the bottom line. Then see where we’re at at the end of the day.”
The Mets’ overall quality of play in recent days, however, does not inspire optimism about what they’ll accomplish in the playoffs if they get there. This is the first time in more than a month and a half that they have dropped three straight.
They are risking throwing away four months of excellence in one particularly bad week.
“You hate for it to happen right now, when you really feel like, OK, you’re at the end of the season. You don’t really have any more time,” Nimmo said. “Unfortunately, baseball doesn’t care. It just happens sometimes. It could happen in the middle of June and it could happen right at the end of September.
“Honestly, we’ve had to play incredible baseball to even just be in this position with the way we started. I don’t think guys should do anything different . . . What we’ve done up to this point, everybody preparing that way and going and sending it — that’s produced really, really good baseball over the last four months. So I think they should continue to do what they’re doing.”
The Mets (87-72) mustered only two hits in what effectively was a bullpen game for the Brewers (93-68): Jose Iglesias’ single in the first and Starling Marte’s leadoff double in the fifth.
Marte’s hit came in the half-inning after Milwaukee broke through with a pair of runs. He reached third base with one out, but neither Harrison Bader (soft lineout) nor Luisangel Acuna (harder lineout) brought him in.
The Mets had no hits and one baserunner the rest of the game.
“A little bit of a momentum shift there,” Mendoza said. “It’s going to look like [the Mets were pressing at the plate] because we’re having a hard time getting things going offensively. But the reality is we’re facing a pretty good pitching staff there.”
The game was close until Milwaukee — which struck out 18 times — scored four runs in the eighth against Reed Garrett and Danny Young.
Like Sean Manaea the night before, Jose Quintana’s great groove ended at a terrible time. He recorded a season-high nine strikeouts but allowed two runs, five hits and two walks in 4 1⁄3 innings.
Well into the fourth inning, all of Milwaukee’s at-bats ended in strikeouts or hard contact — an unusual combination. Quintana, though, held steady and kept the Brewers scoreless. Then he faltered in the fourth, walking a pair of batters to load the bases with two outs for rookie infielder Joey Ortiz. Ortiz’s looping line drive — the first weakly hit batted ball off Quintana — plated two runs.
That ended Quintana’s career-best scoreless streak at 25 2⁄3 innings. It was the first time in September that a team scored against him.
“I was really frustrated with that inning. Too many pitches,” said Quintana, who threw 35 pitches in the frame. “Ortiz put a good swing on that breaking ball. It was soft contact, but that hurts. That hurts a lot.”
Phil Maton tossed 1 2⁄3 scoreless innings, lowering his ERA since joining the Mets to 1.98 in 29 appearances. He came very close to an immaculate inning — three strikeouts on nine pitches — in the sixth. He got the first two batters on six pitches total, then got ahead of the third 0-and-2. Isaac Collins fouled off pitch No. 9, ruining Maton’s bid for the cool footnote, before whiffing on the next offering.
Another ugly game won’t matter if the Mets figure it out Sunday.
“Thankfully, we got tomorrow,” Pete Alonso said. “It’s a really short runway, but we do have three games. Three games are opportunities for us.”
David Peterson will start against the Brewers on Sunday. The Mets selected him over Luis Severino because they preferred to give Severino an extra day of rest, Mendoza said: “We’ve been riding him hard.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
