New York collected just two baserunners in the game — a single and a walk in separate innings — and the Padres are the first team to throw a game-winner in the postseason. They will now face the rival Los Angeles Dodgers when the NLDS begins on Tuesday. Here are four takeaways from Game 3.
The Mets asked to check Musgrove for sticky stuff
It reeked of desperation. With his team down 4-0 in the sixth inning, Mets manager Buck Showalter asked the umpires to test Padres righty Joe Musgrove for foreign substances. Musgrove was trading — only one base runner was allowed at the time — and Showalter did everything he could to upset him or, ideally, take him out of the game. Did not work. The umpires checked Musgrove, touching his ears, and he remained in the game. He gestured to the Mets dugout after a hit later in the inning, then pointed his ears at the crowd as he left the field after the inning. Managers have always been able to ask umpires to check a pitcher for foreign substances, though they rarely do because it’s a mutually assured disaster. Every team has pitchers that use foreign substances, and if you check someone else’s pitcher, they will ask you to check your pitcher. It’s the way of the world, which is why so few foreign substance controls are required. For what it’s worth, Musgrove’s velocity and spin rates were up in Game 3, though the increases are within the range of normal variation from start to start and within the range he showed during the regular season. Also, it’s a postseason elimination game. There is adrenaline. Musgrove showing an upward velocity isn’t the most surprising thing in the world given the circumstances. Ultimately, Musgrove dominated before and after testing for foreign substances. He allowed a single and a walk in seven otherwise clean innings, and the Mets didn’t have a runner to do it at third base. According to MLB.com, Musgrove is the first pitcher in history to throw at least seven innings with no more than two hits allowed in a postseason game-winner. (I want to point out that the Mets were part of the three-team trade that sent Musgrove from the Pirates to the Padres two years ago? They sent catcher/outfielder Endy Rodriguez to the Pirates and received lefty Joey Lucchesi from San Diego. MLB The . com now ranks Rodriguez as the No. 97 prospect in baseball. Lucchesi is recovering from Tommy John surgery.)
San Diego kept coming out to Bassitt
The first inning couldn’t have gone any better for the Mets and Chris Bassitt. Three up, three down in just seven pitches. Things got rough after that. The Padres rallied on a ground ball single and two outs in the second, then No. 9 hitter Austin Nola hit a two-out, two-strike ground ball to left to score two runs. After that first inning, Bassitt faced 15 batters and six reached base, and six of the 10 balls in play had an exit velocity of 95 mph or better. He threw 61 pitches and the Padres swung and missed twice. Bassitt didn’t fool anyone in Game 3 and left with the Mets down 3-0 after four innings. A disappointing end to a very good regular season for the free agent. Also, whether by design or coincidence, the Padres hitters went way outside the box — A LOT — against Bassitt. He has never been a particularly fast worker, although he does not work so slowly that hitters often become impatient in the box. San Diego came out enough that Mets manager Buck Showalter was asked about it during an ESPN interview of the game (he said he didn’t care). My guess — and I stress this is just a guess — that all the steps were intentional. Padres skipper Bob Melvin managed Bassitt with the Athletics from 2015-21, so he knows him well, and that means he knows what gets under his skin. I don’t want to say that the entire outing tripped up Bassitt and explains his submissive outing, but San Diego’s players called time at an excessive rate.
Grisham did more damage
There is no such thing as Wild Card Series MVP, but if there was, Trent Grisham would win it this weekend. He took Max Scherzer deep in Game 1, Jacob deGrom deep in Game 2, then drove in a run with a one-out single against Bassitt in Game 3. And when that wasn’t enough, he saved a run with a terrific run in center field in fifth inning. Grisham’s big weekend comes after a terrible regular season. He hit .184/.284/.341 this year, ranking 126th in OPS among the 130 hitters with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. The postseason is clear though. Each team is 0-0 and each player has a new vertical line. Grisham reached base four times in Game 3 and went 4-for-8 with two homers, two walks and no strikeouts in the Wild Card Series.
Soto and McNeil did something unusual
You never know what you’re going to see when you take the field every day, and in Game 3, Juan Soto and Jeff McNeil did something unusual. Unusual for them, to say the least. First, Solo laid down a sacrifice bun! He was trying to bunt for a hit with the third baseman back and shadowed to shortstop, but it goes down in the record books as a sack. It’s Soto’s first sack since his rookie year in 2018 and just the second of his MLB career. Manny Machado, the next batter, singled in a run. Soto then drove in two insurance runs with a single in the eighth. And secondly, McNeil struck! He had gone 60 plate appearances — since Sept. 20 — without an incredible strikeout. That’s an eternity given the strikeout rate in the league these days. McNeal struck out in just 10.4 percent of his plate appearances this year, the third-lowest rate among the qualifiers and well below the league average of 22.4 percent. Alas, McNeil’s hit came at a bad time — with a runner on first and no outs in the fifth. It helped wipe out a potential rally.
Next
As noted, the Padres will go to Los Angeles to play the Dodgers in the NLDS and the Mets go home. The Wild Card Series round is officially over and the Division Series is on. Game 1 at Dodger Stadium — Game 1 of every Division Series, it should be noted — is scheduled for Tuesday. Here is the full postseason schedule.
