From trumpets to sound of silence as Mets' season ends at Citi Field
New York Mets players in the dugout dejected in the 9th inning as they lose to the San Diego Padres and are eliminated from the playoffs at Citi Field on October 9, 2022. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
Turns out the Mets only ended up cheating themselves.
For all the success of a 101-win regular season and the fleeting glory of their first playoff appearance in six years, they were so out of answers by Game 3 of the NL Wild Card Series that they hijacked the umpiring crew to rattle Padres starter Joe Musgrove by accusing him of doctoring the baseball.
But what happened in Sunday’s season-killing 6-0 loss to the Padres — and really, the Atlanta sweep leading up to the Mets’ ultimate downfall at a funereal Citi Field — seemed to have less to do with the opposition and was more the fault of a blue-and-orange system malfunction.
A week after losing their grip on the NL East crown, the Mets got bounced from the October tournament by the 89-win Padres, with the deciding blow delivered in front of a somewhat bewildered crowd of 39,241 — well short of a sellout at Citi Field.
The energy for an elimination game felt lower than anticipated at Chris Bassitt’s first pitch, and after the Padres built a 2-0 lead in the second inning that they never surrendered, the fans’ reaction was a smattering of boos, some desperate cheers and, by the end, seeming indifference.
When Starling Marte meekly grounded to third for the final out, those still in the half-full ballpark headed quietly for the exit ramps. Not a boo to be heard. Or even a farewell round of applause, maybe as a thank-you for those 101 wins and a playoff berth. Frankly, who could blame them?
“You sacrifice everything in your life to be able to go out there,” Max Scherzer said late Sunday night as the Mets packed up around him. “You push through every injury. All the training you do for these moments. You get to the postseason, and it doesn’t work out, it’s the worst day of the year.”
Second-year owner Steve Cohen, a mega-billionaire Mets fan, invested $290 million in the 2022 roster, the highest payroll in the sport. And for most of the previous six months, it seemed as if the hedge-fund titan had built himself a World Series contender with the absolute right manager at the helm in Buck Showalter.
But in the six most important games of the year, the Mets went 1-5, capped by the two shocking losses to the Padres by an aggregate score of 13-1. On Sunday, Bassitt lasted only four innings before leaving the Mets in a 3-0 hole, and the Mets mustered only a single by Pete Alonso and a walk by Starling Marte. With the season on the line, that was the entirety of their offense.
“We didn’t come through, you know?” Francisco Lindor said. “We didn’t finish the way we wanted. The expectation is always to win the World Series and we didn’t do that. We came up short.”
Lindor is factually correct. The puzzling part is why it happened. The Mets had to be better than this, right?
Showalter, a master tactician, had spent his first season in Flushing earning the trust of the clubhouse, and the group universally praised him. Talent-wise, the Mets had a deep rotation that featured a pair of co-aces with five Cy Young Awards between them in Scherzer and Jacob deGrom, supposedly primed and ready for a long October run.
But aside from two serviceable starts from deGrom, who allowed five runs in 12 innings, Scherzer and Bassitt were mostly a mess. Maybe that had some psychological impact on the lineup because the hitters couldn’t pick up the slack, except in Saturday’s breakout performance in Game 2, when Lindor and Alonso hit go-ahead home runs and batting champ Jeff McNeil’s two-run single broke things open in a 7-3 win.
We figured the Mets might have self-corrected that Saturday night, fixed themselves just in time to beat Musgrove in Sunday’s do-or-die Game 3. Instead, the bats disappeared again.
It’s possible that Musgrove truly was that brilliant. Some people on the Mets, however, evidently didn’t believe in his superpowers after studying his increased spin rate, which prompted Showalter to ask the umpires to check on Musgrove before the Mets batted in the sixth inning.
Crew chief Alfonso Marquez first checked Musgrove’s cap, which apparently was fine. Not satisfied, Marquez thoroughly rubbed both of Musgrove’s ears — no joke — and the umpire even ran his fingers along the right side of the pitcher’s thin beard. Still nothing. All Showalter succeeded in doing was infuriating Musgrove and his (former?) buddy, Padres manager Bob Melvin, who played for him on the 1990s Yankees.
“I feel kind of bad about it,” Showalter said. “However it makes me look, I’m going to do it every time and live with the consequences. I’m not here to not hurt somebody’s feelings. I’m going to do what’s best for our players and the New York Mets.”
The ploy didn’t work, like most everything else the Mets tried to do during this past week-plus. And those 101 wins don’t feel quite as significant anymore.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
