Showalter's moves Buck-fire in Mets' winnable loss
The Mets' Francisco Lindor, left, listens as manager Buck Showalter talks during the fourth inning of a game against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park on Sunday in Washington. Credit: AP/Alex Brandon
WASHINGTON
If there were valid reasons why neither Trevor May nor Seth Lugo appeared in Sunday’s very winnable 4-2 loss to the Nationals, which cost the Mets a four-game sweep, Buck Showalter didn’t really provide them afterward.
Instead, Showalter — with closer Edwin Diaz away for his grandfather’s funeral — gave pretty much the same answer from earlier that morning, when he talked about the importance of making sure both Chasen Shreve and Trevor Williams finally got a chance to pitch in the opening series.
Maybe Showalter felt he was playing with house money Sunday after taking the first three games from the Nationals, who looked well on their way to a 100-loss season. The manager kept expressing his intent to get everyone on the roster involved as soon as possible, and that’s usually a reliable strategy to score points with players after only a few months on the job.
What Showalter needed Sunday, however, was something along the lines of a 10-0 blowout to accomplish that mission. Then it would have been no problem to empty the pen with Shreve and Williams, the latter a long reliever who could have stretched out through the garbage innings.
But that’s not what happened. The Mets found themselves clinging to a 2-1 lead after a superb start by Carlos Carrasco, who retired the final 15 Nationals he faced. Showalter stuck with his pregame plan anyway. To the manager’s credit, part of it worked. Shreve got three outs (along with Tomas Nido cutting down a would-be base-stealer to end the seventh) before giving up a leadoff single to the lefty-hitting Yadiel Hernandez to open the eighth.
All good. Right up to the point when Williams trotted in from the bullpen, rather than May (seen warming in the seventh) or maybe even Adam Ottavino. As we understand it, Williams is not meant to be a high-leverage option. He seems to have that impression as well.
“I’m always going to be ready, regardless of high-leverage or low-leverage,” he said. “But outings like today, early in the year, high leverage is going to help us moving forward so that the first time a high-leverage spot comes, it isn’t September, August or October. It was a good learning moment today.”
In other words, Williams didn’t know why he was in there either. And as for the month, the April games count, too. This isn’t the Grapefruit League anymore. The general rule is when you have a game in your hand, go to your best options to win that game. Learning moments are for Syracuse or Binghamton.
And making sure everyone on the roster plays? Maybe to keep Little League parents happy, but that can’t be the primary goal for the first series of the season. There’s plenty of time left for that. The Nationals, as weak as they are, still have two or three players who can hurt you, including Nelson Cruz, who hit career homer No. 450 in the first inning and added the tiebreaking two-run single off Williams.
“I know it’s a result-oriented business,” Showalter said, “but if you look at the type of balls they gave up and the job that Chasen did, and really Trevor, I’m really happy with it.”
Showalter isn’t totally off base in his assessment. Williams surrendered only two solid singles in that deciding eighth.
But all that traffic on the basepaths set up the defensive circus that followed, with Pete Alonso the ringleader.
On Saturday night, Showalter went with Dominic Smith’s superior glove at first base and Alonso at DH. For Sunday, however, he reversed it and got burned.
The Nationals tied the score when Lucius Fox poked a safety-squeeze bunt up the first-base side and Alonso failed to deliver his underhand throw to the plate in time to get speedy pinch runner Dee Strange-Gordon. Could Smith have gotten the ball there any quicker? Possibly.
One out later, Alonso sabotaged a potential double-play grounder by flinging his throw wide of second base, pulling Francisco Lindor off the bag. With the bases loaded, Alonso did get a forceout at the plate on Juan Soto’s bouncer, but Cruz followed with the game-winning single.
“It’s good to win the first series of the year, but dropping this one late kind of stinks,” Alonso said. “Especially for me. I didn’t want to do that. When I go out there, I don’t want to let anyone down, especially anyone in the locker room. But after not making the play there, I let the team down, and as a result, we lost the game.”
Losing happens. That’s not the part that stings most about dropping the series finale. For the Mets, and Showalter, it’s knowing they should have won.
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.
