Gotta Hit the Easy Ones: Mets Outmuscle Dodgers to Even NLCS

The magic of baseball is that every pitch counts and no game is ever truly over. There’s no victory formation, no garbage time with two minutes left in a 30-point blowout. If you have outs left, you can string together hits ad nauseam and win the game. But while that’s technically true, the game doesn’t really work that way in practice. Most games boil down to a few key moments, where the stakes are heightened and the outcome is truly uncertain. Win those moments, and you generally win the game.

In Game 2 of the NLCS on Monday, there were three such moments. You could use leverage index to tell you that. You could also just watch the game and count when there were a lot of runners on. The Mets won 7-3 to even the series at one game each, but if those three moments had broken differently, the game could have too.

The first inflection point in the game came early. The Dodgers went with a modified version of their plan from last Wednesday: a Ryan Brasier-fronted bullpen game. Landon Knack came in for the second inning this time, which makes sense to me as an armchair manager. The Dodgers were going to need at least one less-trusted reliever to throw, because Alex Vesia got hurt in Game 5 of the NLDS and was left off the roster for this series, and Daniel Hudson apparently wasn’t even available on Monday. Why not get Knack in early, against the bottom half of the Mets lineup, and see whether he had it or not? A scoreless outing would set the Dodgers up to aim high-leverage options at the top of the New York order the rest of the day. A bad outing? They could pull the ripcord and keep everyone fresh. Better to find that out in the second inning than the seventh.

As was always a risk, Knack got into trouble quickly. Two hits and a walk gave the Mets runners on second and third with a two-run lead. With two outs, Dave Roberts intentionally walked Francisco Lindor (reasonable, though I wouldn’t have) to load the bases and set up our first feature: Mark Vientos against Knack with the bases loaded.

When Vientos got to the plate, Knack had already thrown 15 pitches and accumulated exactly one swinging strike. In total, he’d go on to garner three whiffs out of 27 Mets swings, a disastrously low ratio. The right-hander’s fastball looked quite hittable, so he started Vientos off with a slider down and away. That’s a classic way to attack a righty batter, especially one as chase-prone as Vientos, who struggled with strikeouts in general and righty sliders in particular this year. But Knack’s offering was ever so slightly low out of his hand, and Vientos laid off.

Knack still wasn’t interested in using his fastball, so he came back with another slider, this one right at the bottom of the zone. Vientos took a big cut – early. He tapped it foul down the third base line. Knack then followed up with another slider in the zone, but this one slipped a bit. It was high, though not a hanger; it broke away from Vientos sharply, and he swung again, but too late this time. He punched it foul into the right-field stands.

Vientos was in swing mode. Knack and catcher Will Smith had a great solution: a fastball above the zone. Knack reached back for 96, about as hard as he can throw, and the pitch ended up so high it looked like an easy take. Vientos still covered it, fouling it back out of play. It was one of those swings that bodes poorly for the pitcher; when your opponent makes square-ish contact with a fastball that high, you probably shouldn’t throw them any more heaters.

Knack didn’t need to hear that twice. With Vientos now swinging freely, he tried to throw a wipeout slider. He overcooked it badly; Vientos was definitely looking for an excuse to swing, but this pitch wasn’t one. That made it 2-2, and now the Dodgers had a choice to make: slider in the zone, or slider down and away? Knack attacked the zone but, uh, he attacked it with a hanging slider in the upper third. This was definitely one of the worst pitches he threw all game. Vientos was all over it – but again, he was out in front and yanked it foul.

Well, might as well go back to the low and outside corner while there’s still a ball to spare in the count. That’s what Knack did, but it was nowhere near the zone and Vientos took it comfortably. Full count. Knack had no choice but to challenge Vientos. He aimed for the bottom of the zone again with a slider, but this time he left it right over the middle of the plate. Vientos topped it foul. Sliders just weren’t working – Knack didn’t have the fine control to put it where Vientos would chase, and he couldn’t afford to walk in a run.

That led to the turning point of the game. Knack and Smith decided that their best bet was a fastball. After all, they’d shown Vientos seven sliders out of eight pitches. Maybe he’d be fooled, or maybe he’d at least be late on it. But wherever Knack was aiming, it probably wasn’t middle-middle. Vientos was a hair late, but not by a meaningful amount. He smashed the ball to right center, with just enough juice to get out:

MARK VIENTOS GRAND SLAM

THE @METS ARE RAKING IN LA ? pic.twitter.com/DIQYRNusVa

— MLB (@MLB) October 14, 2024

To the extent that you can earn any hit, Vientos earned that one. He swung at every pitch that wasn’t an obvious ball and never missed. He took two sliders that would have ended his at-bat. He still had power when he got a fastball to hit. But it’s not like he crushed every mistake. Knack just kept feeding him cookies:

That could have been the last meaningful pitch of the game. At 6-0, the inflection point of true blowout isn’t far away. But the Mets weren’t free and clear. The Dodgers bullpen put up zeroes after the grand slam, and Mets starter Sean Manaea ran into trouble in the sixth: walk, walk, muffed double play grounder that instead loaded the bases. The Mets brought in Phil Maton to put out the fire, and after a pop out, a single, and a walk, the Dodgers had the bases loaded again, down 6-3. Postseason stalwart Enrique Hernández (did you know he hits a lot of homers in the postseason? I’ll bet you did if you’ve been listening to the broadcasts) had a chance to turn things around.

Maton normally features a nasty curveball, but he was struggling to locate it. The first one he threw hung up in an 0-2 count to Tommy Edman, who ripped it past Pete Alonso for a two-run single. The second one bounced in to Max Muncy for a walk. The third one? That was the first pitch to Hernández, and it could have been a disaster. He put it up there on a platter, middle-middle at 75 mph. Hernández jumped all over it, but he ripped it foul.

Okay then, no more curves. Maton turned to his other favorite pitch, a tight cutter. He missed just high to even the count, 1-1. But it had been close, and what else was Maton going to throw? He came back with another one, similarly located but just a hair lower. This time, Hernández swung through it. Now it was 1-2, and Maton was in the driver’s seat. His cutter was giving Hernández problems. His sweeper plays well off of that cutter, particularly to righties. Anything other than a curveball seemed like a good option – preferably either above the zone or diving off the plate away.

Instead, he dialed up the kind of pitch fans have nightmares about: a hanging sweeper, the least horizontal break of any he threw all game, and right down main street. Hernández was swinging all the way, and this was a pitch to hit. But he was early: He punched it to third base, not hard enough to split the defenders but enough that even with a bobble from Vientos, the Mets had time to turn two. It required a deft turn from Jose Iglesias and a lunging catch at first base from Pete Alonso, but the Mets escaped with no further damage. Let’s just say that the Dodgers probably wanted a do-over on this fourth pitch:

That might have put the game away for good, but there was still one last jolt of drama left. Ryne Stanek ran into trouble in the eighth inning, surrendering a two-out single and then a walk to bring the tying run to the plate. Carlos Mendoza wasn’t taking any chances: He brought in Edwin Díaz for a four-out save, which meant Hernández had another key at-bat with the game on the line.

Díaz isn’t at his peak anymore. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still good, but he’s not automatic the way he was in 2021 and ’22. He’d already been victimized by the Phillies this postseason, and scattershot only begins to describe his command: He’d walked five batters in only three appearances heading into Monday. Hernández was up there with a home run on his mind, but surely in the back of his head, he knew that Díaz might bounce a few.

The first pitch was absolutely perfect, a slider painted on the outside corner. It was a high one, tunneled off a fastball above the zone that has been his signature pitch for years, and Hernández wasn’t interested in swinging at it. The next pitch was a much worse slider, bounced in the dirt. To make matters worse, the runners both stole and made it easily, amping up the pressure. Another ball in the dirt could bring home a run. But Díaz has had trouble with his fastball off and on this year, so he stuck with the slider.

This time, he split the difference, locating just off the corner low and away. Hernández took a big cut and came up nearly empty, foul tipping it into Francisco Alvarez’s mitt. Surely, it was time for a waste fastball above the zone. Hernández was leaning out to hit that low and away slider, and he hadn’t yet seen Díaz’s fastball. But instead, Díaz dialed up yet another slider. He reached back deep for this one, throwing it a full two mph faster than the average of the three previous ones. But he also left it middle-middle:

Yikes. That’s not where you want to throw a slider against a famous postseason home run hitter. But Hernández didn’t catch it square. He got under it and lofted a lazy fly ball to right field, light work for Starling Marte.

The Mets tacked on a ninth-inning insurance run. The Dodgers briefly threatened in the bottom half after some signature Díaz wildness. But those three plate appearances – which each ended on middle-middle pitches that the opposing hitter swung at – decided the game. The Mets cashed theirs in. The Dodgers squandered theirs. Sometimes, baseball is as simple as that.

Odds and Ends

• We all know that Freddie Freeman is hurt, but Brandon Nimmo is too. He’s been dealing with plantar fasciitis since May, according to The Athletic, and he aggravated the injury in the NLDS. He made an excellent leaping catch in the eighth inning and came down hobbling afterward. Keep an eye on him in the field and on the basepaths; the Mets don’t have enough depth to easily replace him.

• Dave Roberts came into this game planning to deploy his high-leverage arms, but he pivoted after Knack allowed a five-spot in the second. Knack, Brent Honeywell, and Edgardo Henriquez each threw multiple innings, with Anthony Banda chipping in a scoreless frame of his own. That leaves the best arms in the Dodgers bullpen fully rested for the three-game stretch in New York – and the Mets haven’t seen a single high-end Los Angeles reliever yet this series.

• Pete Alonso stole three bases all season. He manufactured a run in the ninth inning with his legs, though. First, he took a walking lead and stole second base standing up. His jump was so good that Marte noticed it from the box and stepped away in full take mode – he didn’t want to take any chance that his brain would convince him to swing. Then Alonso scored on a close play at the plate when Marte singled up the middle. Not exactly how I expected Alonso to impact the game, but credit him for seeing an opportunity and taking it.

• Díaz was always coming into this game after the Dodgers pulled within three, but for a while, it looked like he might get to avoid facing the top of the Dodgers order. That matters in seven-game series; you’d prefer to hide your best relievers from the other team’s best hitters when you can, because the familiarity effect is real. With two outs in the eighth, it looked like the Mets might get away with it. Ryne Stanek needed to retire Tommy Edman to finish the inning, which would’ve given Díaz the 7-8-9 portion of the lineup in the ninth. But Edman singled and Max Muncy walked, setting up the third fateful at-bat from up above. Then two runners reached in the ninth. In the end, Díaz had to face the top four Los Angeles hitters, something to keep in mind as the series continues.