Fine margins are often the difference between flushing a sweep over the weekend with a solid series-opening win over a division rival and a four-game losing streak. For the Mets, the little mistakes in Tuesday’s 5-4 loss to the Atlanta Braves in 10 innings ended up costing them a game they will come away thinking they should have won.
“It’s a tough one there, it’s a tough loss,” manager Carlos Mendoza said.
The Mets were in position to win because they put up four runs against a pitcher who entered the game having their number in Spencer Schwellenbach – with home runs from Juan Soto and Tyrone Taylor – and after getting seven innings of one-run ball from David Peterson, came one strike away from getting out of a bases loaded jam in the eighth inning.
But in that eighth, which began with Peterson putting the first two runners on base, the one strike ended up being a bases-clearing double that tied the game as Marcell Ozuna got a thigh-high splitter on the inside corner and just kept it fair down the left field line. The pitch proved to be the costliest of a series of mistakes that proved too costly to overcome.
Catcher Francisco Alvarez said reliever Reed Garrett called for a fastball, but he changed the third 2-2 offering to the splitter. “I think he was right,” the catcher said after the game. “I maybe made a mistake in that situation, so I feel very bad for that. I gotta stay with him, with the fastball.”
Alvarez said he changed the pitch because on the previous pitch, Ozuana just managed to foul away a splitter below the knees with an emergency hack. “He do a horrible swing,” Alvarez said with a smile. “I was thinking we have [a spot] to throw another splitter.”
Garrett said it is “easy to look back and think we threw the wrong pitch, but Alvy called my swing and miss pitch. I could have executed a little bit better, we could have got a little bit more lucky.”
“I thought after the emergency swing [by Ozuna] that he wouldn’t have been on time for the fastball,” the reliever said, explaining why he called for the heater. “Alvy changed it, and I thought that maybe he saw something that I didn’t see.
“I don’t think it’s the wrong pitch. I don’t think it’s the wrong pitch; we have plenty of other options. I just think that if it was executed down a little bit more, it could have been a ground ball.”
Baserunning blunders
On the bases, the Mets had a couple of mistakes that ended up coming back to bite them, two of which were plays where hard-hit balls ended up with runners being doubled up off first base.
The first came in the sixth with the Mets up by three. Pete Alonso was at first base after cracking his second single of the game, and Jeff McNeil hit a sharp liner right at shortstop Nick Allen, who caught the ball and tossed it to first to get Alonso to end the inning.
“We gotta do a better job there reading the line drive in the infield,” Mendoza said, calling it a baserunning mistake by Alonso for not freezing or retreating toward first a bit.
With the score tied in the ninth, Soto (who was picked off first earlier in the game when he broke for second with the pitcher still on the rubber) was caught off first. Alonso crushed a ball to deep right, but Ronald Acuña Jr. ranged back and made a leaping grab just before the wall. Soto, being aggressive and looking to get to third or better, was near second base when Acuña caught the ball.
Only Soto didn’t react to the catch and waited for first base umpire Edwin Jimenez to signal out. The problem by the time Jimenez raised his right arm and Soto realized he had to retreat, Acuña had the ball out of his glove and was throwing to first.
“We rely on the umpires, we wait for them to make the call,” Soto said. “…the goal is to look for the umpire and make sure he makes the right call, and I felt like he took way too long to make a decision and he just put me in a tough spot.”
He added of the Jimenez’s call: “He just took forever to do it.”
The skipper called it “not an easy decision” for the base runner. “Kinda in no man’s land, too and Acuña makes a helluva play,” Mendoza said, adding that in his mind the umpire “took a while” to make an out call.
“Juan is kinda waiting and that was my argument there,” he said. “But for the umpire, he’s gotta wait for Acuña to show him the ball before he makes any call, so, in the heat of the moment, it happens fast and you go and argue, but a tough play for Juan, great play for Acuña.”
Soto called it “part of the game” and something they “gotta learn from.”
“It puts you in a tough spot right there,” he said of the call. “Tie game, I’m trying to at least get to third or score, and then something like that happens. It’s just tough.”
Alvarez throws to second
In the bottom of the 10th after the Mets failed to score in the top half, Mendoza walked Acuña Jr. intentionally to put runners on first and second. Huascar Brazobán got the first out and the Mets had a big chance to steal a second out.
On a ball in the dirt that Alvarez couldn’t backhand cleanly and lost behind him, the runner at second, Luke Williams, broke but then stopped halfway to third. If Alvarez ran at Williams or threw to third, it would have been a rundown and likely the second out.
Instead, Alvarez quickly tossed to second, and the winning run was at third.
Mendoza called it a “good play by the runner,” realizing quickly that Alvarez was going to second and to break from “no man’s land” to the safety of third base. “Gotta give him credit on that one,” he said.
“That’s your reaction there, you pick up the baseball, you get a runner that is hanging there between second and third and he makes an attempt to go back,” Mendoza said. “As a player, your reaction is you gonna try and get him. [The runner] did a good job and took advantage of it.”
Alvarez regretted his throw, calling it a reaction play to snap throw to second.
With runners at the corners, a walk loaded the bases, and a sacrifice fly to the warning track in deep right-center ended the game.
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