NEW YORK — The tightrope of pitching in October revealed itself on either side in front of a towel-waving crowd Saturday at Citi Field. Padres starter Blake Snell contended with a compact strike zone and his own inaccuracy before a fourth-inning exit. Jacob deGrom, in what might have been his final outing for the Mets, went from overwhelming hitters with 102 mph heat to leaning away from his ferocious fastball. New York’s Edwin Díaz, in his first seventh inning this year, found himself in two footraces to first base. San Diego fireman Nick Martinez laughed after dodging a comebacker that nearly took off his head. Snell, Martinez and another reliever combined to walk nine batters and hit another.
Only three of those base runners came around to score. The Padres, fortunate in spite of themselves and a number of iffy ball-strike calls, wobbled at a few junctures during a game that was still close when Díaz, baseball’s most dominant closer, made an interestingly timed entrance. For Buck Showalter, it was a calculated risk: The Mets manager wanted to quell a suddenly scalding Trent Grisham and subsequently pit his best reliever against the top of the San Diego order.
“I think it was pretty obvious,” Showalter later said, “why we did it that way.”
Arguably less clear, in the wake of a 7-3 loss that evened this Wild Card Series, was why Padres manager Bob Melvin put left-hander Adrian Morejon atop the mound in the bottom of the seventh. Yet after the game, ahead of a decisive series finale, Melvin readily gave his reason, too: He did not mind the matchup against a switch-hitting Francisco Lindor. With lefty Jeff McNeil and switch hitter Eduardo Escobar due up fourth and fifth, respectively, the Padres were hoping for more than three outs from Morejon.
“We were comfortable with him,” Melvin said.
Then, like Snell, Morejon struggled with his control. A one-run deficit tripled. Melvin brought in Pierce Johnson, and the righty promptly allowed two inherited runners to score. In hindsight, the decision to summon Morejon, a 23-year-old pitching in his first fan-attended playoff game, might have seemed questionable. It also underlined something else.
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(Photo: Brad Penner / USA Today)