How Carlos Mendoza managed and his plan to win the game Sunday night

When it comes to pitching, one thing that’s not often discussed is – How are you going to try to win the game? Sunday’s tilt with the Phillies shows the different ways that managers can approach this issue. With the game tied, 1-1, Carlos Mendoza yanked Tylor Megill after four innings, saying he was going to try to win the game with his bullpen. The Phillies sent Zack Wheeler out for the eighth inning. They were going to try to win the game with their CY Award candidate.

You can’t tell a whole lot from one game. And Megill’s pitch count was going to keep him from pitching much more than one additional inning. But in a game where if they won it would give them nice momentum going into the Atlanta series, Mendoza decided that Megill had done enough and turned it over to his bullpen.

To be clear, this is neither criticizing the decision nor patting Mendoza on the back. It’s just observing what happened in Game #156. This was not a crucial game – the Mets would still be the third Wild Card team even if they lost. But at this point of the season, every game feels important and every managerial decision gets magnified.

All of us greybeards want to see starting pitchers go deeper into games. And to Mendoza’s credit, he’s been pushing his starters harder here more recently. And the results have been very good. Here in September, Mets’ starters lead MLB with a 2.28 ERA. In the same span, the team’s relievers have been good, too. It’s just that they haven’t been quite as good as the starters. The relievers have a 3.77 ERA, which ranks 15th in the majors.

And that includes the five scoreless frames they had Sunday night.

Everyone thinks they could manage a team and to a certain point, they’re right. One could somewhat competently do the job without any advanced training beyond a lifetime of watching the games. Of course, there’s a gap between doing the job somewhat competently and being good at it.

My take on managers is that they have to know all of the angles when it comes to in-game strategy. But they also need to have a “feel” for the game, and know when to be guided by numbers and when to trust your eyes and your lifetime of experience with the game. Just so there’s no doubt – this is not in any way, shape or form advocating for a manager to play “hunches,” or to do a poor job of interpreting numbers, like playing a guy who has three singles in eight ABs against a pitcher.

In Sunday’s game, Mendoza wasn’t a slave to the numbers. Even though his starters have been noticeably better than his relievers here recently – and that includes Megill – he yanked him after four innings in a game where he had thrown just 83 pitches and allowed just one run.

Most of us armchair managers would have sent Megill back out for the fifth inning. And to be sure, if the pen had given up runs and the Mets lost, we would have been criticizing the decision to pull Megill at that point.

But Mendoza, even in this span where he’s been giving starters more rope, thought that the best option was to go to his pen early. And he didn’t put one of his “B” relievers in the game. Instead, he used Phil Maton, who typically pitches in the seventh inning or later. And not only did he go to him early, Mendoza used Maton for two innings, the first time in 28 games he called on Maton to give six outs.

Mendoza surprised me again by going to Diaz at the start of the eighth inning, with the idea of using him for six outs, too. It was only the second time in 53 games this year where Diaz recorded six outs. The Phillies had the top of the order due up in the eighth, so there was definitely a sound logic to using him for that frame.

Yet we can question Mendoza’s decision to use Diaz in the ninth inning. This was Diaz’ third appearance in four games, he had already thrown 15 pitches, with the final 11 of those being high-stress ones, as a runner reached base and swiped two bags. And the Phillies were going towards the bottom of the order, with their 5-6-7 hitters due up.

Reed Garrett had thrown 10 pitches on Saturday but should have been available for one inning to close out the game. He hadn’t allowed a run in nine appearances this month and had 1 BB and 11 Ks in that span. Garrett would have been a solid choice to finish up in a big situation.

At the end of the day, Mendoza didn’t use paint-by-numbers managing with his pitchers in this game. He didn’t even follow his own practice of pitching starters deeper. In the immediate sense, we’re happy because the Mets won the game. My take is that if this is the type of managing we’ll see from Mendoza in the future, the Mets will be in good shape.

Finally, perhaps the best decision Mendoza made in this game was putting Harrison Bader on the bench. Tyrone Taylor drove in the first run of the game and had a two-hit night. The Mets are 9-4 this month in games Bader starts. Yet they’re 6-1 in games where someone else – typically Taylor – starts instead. Bader has a .586 OPS this month, while Taylor checks in with a 1.009 OPS. And while Taylor has been hot this month, he’s been out-hitting Bader for months now, since the beginning of June.

The Bader/Taylor decision is one where both the numbers and the eyes should agree. It will be curious to see how Mendoza handles that, along with a 100 other things, in the final six games of the season.