That was a bad one.
A bad one as in you shut off the TV and kept fixing it with a thousand-yard stare.
It’s even crueler because once upon a time that was a good one: The Mets came back from a 4-0 deficit, with Harrison Bader [1] striking the big blow, then went ahead when Starling Marte [2] engineered a small-ball run: bunt single, steal, move to third on a Brandon Nimmo [3] grounder to the right side and then score by okey-dokeing rookie catcher Adrian Del Castillo [4], whose perfunctory tag proved all too easy for Marte to slide around. (The shot of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. [5] sitting in the outfield after seeing a perfect throw go for naught was priceless.)
But that was once upon a time. In the eighth Phil Maton [6] (not Dedniel Nunez [7], for some reason) walked the leadoff hitter, got a pair of outs and then gave way to Edwin Diaz [8], who arrived with red flights flashing, as neither the fastball nor the slider looked crisp. He walked Pavin Smith [9] on four pitches, then walked Geraldo Perdomo [10] to load the bases for a resurrected Corbin Carroll [11]. Diaz got a first-pitch strike that probably wasn’t a strike, but you could feel the ax about to fall, as indeed it did: Diaz left a slider in the middle of the plate and Carroll demolished it. It was the same pitch Diaz threw to Jackson Merrill [12] last time we saw him in San Diego, with the same result [13].
Diaz’s time in New York has certainly been dramatic. His inaugural season was one of the more high-profile debacles in club history, as a lights-out closer turned walking disaster and head case. Somehow he clawed his way out of that vale of despond, and on one of the toughest stages in sports no less, and was embraced as a fan favorite and an icon.
And now, well, he’s turned into Dizzy Dean [14].
Dean famously suffered a broken toe in an All-Star Game — an innocuous injury, as it didn’t involve Dean’s precious right arm. Except the toe injury caused him to change his mechanics, leading to a cascade of maladies that finished him as a pitcher. Diaz needed a year to recover from a torn patellar tendon suffered in the World Baseball Classic, and while his arm appears sound, clearly something has gone terribly wrong. His slider has lost its bite, going from an unhittable thing that haunts hitters’ dreams to a BP offering that has them licking their chops.
I’m sure the Mets will say stoic and loyal things, sticking by their teammate and believing in him and themselves and all that, but Diaz has become fundamentally untrustworthy. We know it and they know it and worst of all I suspect Diaz knows it.
Meanwhile, the Braves (those annoyingly resilient Braves) are threatening to disappear from view in the wild-card chase, taking the Mets’ playoff hopes with them. But even if the Mets have another hot streak in them, even if they persevere and wind up playing games past No. 162, look me in the eye and tell me you see them getting through October with Diaz closing high-pressure games.
It’s easy to overreact after losing a tough game like that [15], and it’s even easier to overreact after losing a tough game that ends after midnight, making you question your life choices on top of everything else. But that one felt like the end, didn’t it?