OMG! Iglesias Keys Mets to 8-4 Victory Over Brewers

I’ve heard the phrase “track meet” more this year than at any point since I ran track in high school. Some of that is Olympics-related – great track meet! – but most of it is because analysts like me can’t resist referencing track and field when we bring up the Milwaukee Brewers. “They turn games into track meets.” “They have gamebreaking speed.” You’ve no doubt read those two sentences (and many variations on them) as people explain the team’s success this year.

Those comparisons aren’t wrong. The Brewers can flat out fly. Brice Turang, the first batter of today’s Wild Card game against the New York Mets, slapped a grounder past Mark Vientos and turned on the afterburners en route to a double. He did it again in the third. Garrett Mitchell went first to third beautifully. Sal Frelick had a hustle double of his own. Turang and Jackson Chourio advanced adroitly in a two-run fourth. If there are 90 feet lying around for the taking, the Brewers will grab them. You have to be alert whenever there’s an open bag and a Milwaukee player on base, and they’ll take away hits with their defense to boot.

The Mets, in comparison, are station-to-station mashers. They hit 30 more homers than the Brewers this year and stole 111 fewer bases. The average Mets hitter is 30 years old; the average Brewers hitter is 26.4. If this were a track meet, the Mets would not be favored. They wouldn’t have a prayer of winning, if I’m being honest; the Brewers outfield is three-quarters of a 4×100 relay team, and fourth outfielder Blake Perkins completes the squad. If you could actually turn a game into a race, the Brewers would be 100% likely to win this series (I’m not sure how good anyone on these teams is at high jump or hammer throw, so we’ll leave the “field” part aside).

No one hit a home run in today’s game. In some senses, then, this was the ideal “track meet” game. As I mentioned, the Brewers tore up the basepaths whenever they had a chance. The Mets were relatively restrained. They took the odd base on a defensive miscue – Jesse Winker tripled home two runs after a bobble, and Tyrone Taylor doubled when Chourio took a bad route to a smashed line drive – but that’s not really their game. They struck out more frequently than the Brewers. Surely, this is the best-case scenario folks are describing when they talk about this year’s Milwaukee squad.

Naturally, then, the Mets won 8-4. By pretty much every speed-related statistic, they got outplayed. But as it turns out, even when you keep the ball in the yard, most of baseball isn’t about sprinting really fast in a straight line. The Mets did a ton of little things well, and they added up to eight runs against a quality opponent.

First, they waited Freddy Peralta out. He came out throwing mainly fastballs and changeups, putting his slider in his back pocket. The Mets didn’t walk a ton against him, but they had a plan: work counts and try to swing at fastballs. Six of their nine balls in play came on heaters. Peralta averaged 4.5 pitches per batter and only lasted four innings. It cost them on the strikeout front – five in those four innings – but Winker’s timely triple meant they racked up three runs anyway.

Then came the critical inning, and the Mets actually did turn the game into a track meet, only on their terms. With runners on first and second and two outs, Jose Iglesias slapped a grounder that first baseman Rhys Hoskins fielded deep in the hole. He gathered himself, turned, and tossed to reliever Joel Payamps. Just one problem: Payamps lost the race to the bag. Iglesias, who at age 34 can still motor, turned on the turbo boosters about halfway down the line and beat Payamps to first with a perfect headfirst slide. Taylor, the runner on second, never stopped; he scored to tie the game at four. An actual footrace – Payamps against Iglesias, with the Brewers getting a massive head start – and the old dudes pulled it out:

I’m not sure whether the Brewers were flustered by that play, or whether it simply wasn’t their day, but things unraveled quickly from there. Brandon Nimmo reached on an infield single that Willy Adames had a chance at – he would’ve needed to make a spectacular play, but he couldn’t get a grip on the ball in his do-or-die attempt, and that was that. Vientos crushed a dead-red fastball for a two-run single. J.D. Martinez pinch-hit in a big spot against a lefty and smashed a grounder through the defense to the opposite field for another two runs. Vientos and Martinez are slow, and they didn’t hit home runs, but there are other ways to win baseball games.

The Brewers didn’t get the breaks on Tuesday, and they weren’t able to manufacture their own luck. They came out after that disastrous five-run fifth and went pop out-strikeout-pop out in the bottom half of the inning. They hit exactly one ball 95 mph or harder the rest of the day, and it was pounded directly into the dirt in front of home plate. Heck, they only had four hard-hit balls all game, and three were grounders. The Mets, for their part, recorded 11 of them, eight of which were in the air. The Brewers popped out six times and grounded into a double play; the Mets popped out three times with no double plays.

By game’s end, this one didn’t feel particularly close. The Mets used José Buttó for two innings and then Ryne Stanek to close things out. They didn’t allow so much as a single baserunner. There was no last-second turnaround, no late-inning drama. The Mets didn’t have to use their closer or extend their starter for a risky number of innings. They didn’t get into the weak part of the bullpen. They just scored eight runs and cruised to the finish line (to be fair, scoring eight runs usually lets you do that).

You should never read too much into a single baseball game. For as much as I made it sound like the Brewers never stood a chance, they out-hit the Mets. They out-slugged them, too. Their bullpen has been better all year. A five-run inning keyed by a defensive misplay and two infield singles, one of which involved a headfirst dive into first base, was the difference between victory and defeat. If Payamps had gotten to the bag half a step earlier, maybe I’d be talking about how the track meet plan paid off for Milwaukee today.

But broadly speaking, you should be skeptical of these simple narratives. The Brewers don’t make every game about their speed and only their speed, because that’s not how baseball works. Speed is a part of the game, but it’s nowhere near the whole thing. It’s mostly a game of batter against pitcher, and the team that hits the ball harder tends to do better. The team that walks more tends to do better, too, and New York racked up five free passes to Milwaukee’s two.

When the two teams play tomorrow, no one’s going to get in a three-point stance waiting for the starter’s gun (though after today, I’d pay to see a race between Payamps and Iglesias). They’re going to play baseball, not run track. The Brewers might win – they’ll be favored to win, in fact. And they could win while out-homering the Mets and making a bunch of defensive misplays, just as easily as they could win because their speed is undeniable. Today’s game was about hitting the ball hard and posting a big inning, though no one knew that in advance, just like no one knows what tomorrow’s game will be about. That’s part of the joy of playoff baseball – or the pain, if you’re a Brewers fan tonight.