Jeff McNeil and Eduardo Escobar deliver the big hits to reward the ‘grind it out’ offense

With a bad loss on Friday night, Charlie had to write the doom and gloom piece on Saturday. But with Saturday’s big win, it’s my fortune to write about how the sun is shining. It’s like on “The Great British Baking Show,” where I get to be Noel Fielding and announce who wins Star Baker.

My guess is that Padres fans are disappointed with Blake Snell for a lousy outing after posting a 0.72 ERA in his final four starts of the regular season. But we Mets fans would point to this game as our offense functioning as it did for a majority of the regular season. Grind out at-bats, wear pitchers down with high pitch counts, put runners on base and score some runs with a HR or two, too.

The bottom of the first started with a seven-pitch AB for Brandon Nimmo and ended with a single. And while Starling Marte put a damper on things by grounding into a double play on the first pitch he saw, the inning ended with Snell throwing 29 pitches and the Mets with a 1-0 lead, thanks to a homer by Francisco Lindor.

With it being a do-or-die game, it was easy to be frustrated that the Mets didn’t score more than a single run. Especially given how they let Yu Darvish get out of trouble in the first and second innings the night before. But my opinion is that the early run was enough for the team to relax and they responded the way they did for most of the regular season when things got tough.

And things did get tough in this game.

The Padres came back and tied the game. Then the Mets added another run, knocking out Snell after making him throw 90 pitches in 3.1 IP. The Padres came back and tied the game again. Then the Mets went ahead for good, this time with Pete Alonso belting a homer.

Finally, the seventh inning showed the 2022 Mets’ offense in all of its glory. Instead of muttering about how they couldn’t get a hit with a runner in scoring position, we saw Jeff McNeil pull a ball for a two-run double and we witnessed Eduardo Escobar beat the shift with an RBI single to the opposite field, one that he might have rolled over into the shift for an easy out earlier this season. And then Daniel Vogelbach came up as a pinch-hitter. So many times, we’ve criticized Vogelbach for being too passive. But he swung at the first two pitches and on the fifth pitch of the AB, he lifted a ball deep to right field for a sac fly.

McNeil’s hit was big because he had come up two previous times and failed to come thru, despite putting good swings on the ball. In the first inning he came up with two on and two out and hit a ball with an expected batting average of .660, only for the center fielder to make a nice catch on it. Then, in the fifth inning, he hit a ball with an expected batting average of .900, only for an even nicer play by the CF to rob him of a hit. The BABIP gods finally came thru for him in the seventh, when his third good swing paid off. His ball with the 101-mph-exit velocity and an expected batting average of .640 delivered the goods. And it came with him pulling the ball. Baseball-Reference shows McNeil batting .449 in the 140 PA where he pulled the ball in 2022, with 28 XBH. Instead of getting giddy when he slaps the ball the other way, we should celebrate when he pulls the ball with authority. It’s not different from Daniel Murphy back in 2015.

In all, the Mets made the Padres throw 197 pitches, compared to the 128 they did in the first-game loss. Nimmo saw 22 pitches, as did Lindor. But those weren’t even the top of the night, as Mark Canha saw 24 and Alonso saw 28. Nimmo went 3-4 with a walk, Lindor and Alonso both homered and combined for three walks and Canha walked twice. Those were four of the top five hitters in the batting order, the ones that came to the plate five times. The only one missing was Marte, who saw 18 pitches and went 0-5. It’s not like 18 pitches is a bad total for five PA, especially after his initial PA ended after one pitch, but it puts a nice bow on the story to have the player with the fewest pitches seen have the worst night.

The Padres won Game 1, as they scored all seven of their runs on four homers. The Mets scored seven runs in Game 2, but only two came on homers. For the two games combined, the Padres have scored 10 runs, with eight of them via the long ball. The Mets have scored eight runs, with three being provided by homers.

My preference is to hang out with the chicks and dig the long ball. But the most HR-driven offense will score around 50% of their runs on homers. The Yankees led the majors with 254 home runs and 410 of their 807 runs scored via the homer. That’s 51%. The Braves finished second with 243 HR, which accounted for 373 of their 789 runs, which is 47%.

The Padres were not a HR-driven offense during the regular season. But in two games in the playoffs, they have 80% of their runs coming by the long ball. Can they win Sunday if Chris Bassitt keeps them in the park? Their regular season numbers say yes. Their playoff numbers say no.

Meanwhile, the Mets hit 171 HR during the regular season, which accounted for 288 of their 772 runs scored, or 37%. Here in the playoffs, they’ve scored 37.5% of their runs via the homer.

It’s only two games and wacky things happen all of the time in a tiny sample like that. But the Mets won their game by succeeding the way they did over 162 games. They need to grind at-bats and put enough runners on base that eventually they get hits with runners in scoring position. The Padres won their game by going against type – they hit 153 HR during the regular season, fewer than the Mets – aided perhaps by facing a pitcher going thru an injury and aided perhaps by a night when the wind was blowing out.

Bassitt had a 0.94 HR/9 for the Mets this year, following a 0.86 mark in 2021 in Oakland. In the second half of the year, Bassitt allowed 5 HR in 79.2 IP, which is a 0.56 HR/9, although four of those five homers came in September. It seems unlikely he’ll allow four homers.

Meanwhile, the Padres pitcher tonight is Joe Musgrove, who faced the Mets once this year and who gave up 4 ER in 5.1 IP, including a 3-run homer to Alonso, which followed a single by Marte and a double by Lindor. Musgrove threw 89 pitches in the outing. The Mets had him on the ropes in the fifth inning, with runners on second and third and no outs. But they were unable to cash in then. But they grinded to the same spot the next frame and came thru. They got the hit with runners in scoring position in their fifth shot.

It would be nice if the Mets cashed in with runners in scoring position sooner rather than later in tonight’s game. But while it’s frustrating to see opportunities go by, the key is to continue to get them. They did that in both games so far here in the Wild Card round. They had 11 ABs with runners in scoring position in Game 1 and 10 in Game 2. In the two games against Darvish during the regular season, they had a total of seven ABs with a RISP.

Game 1 was a drag all the way around. But the Mets are in a position to do what they’ve done 21 times previously this season – win a three-game series, 2-1. Hopefully, we see big hits with RISP again, like the ones McNeil and Escobar delivered in the seventh inning Saturday. And if Alonso and Lindor want to hit homers again, that would be very welcome, too.