The Mets suffered their first loss of the season and it didn’t come without some controversy.
Buck Showalter faced tough questions from reporters for the first time as Mets manager. Showalter opted to go to Trevor Williams in a one-run game in the eighth inning rather than Trevor May, who did warm up at one point.
The results were three runs crossing to give the Nationals a 4-2 lead entering the ninth inning and ultimately giving the Nats the win.
The Mets skipper explained his bullpen decisions.
“Trevor [Williams] needed to pitch today and he was going to pitch and Chasen [Shreve] was going to pitch today,” said Showalter. “Can’t let them go four, five, six, seven days into the season (without pitching). They pitched well, both of them.”
When asked if he thought about going to higher-leverage caliber arms, the 65-year-old did not seem too pleased with the question, noting that some of his relievers were not throwing on Sunday in any circumstance.
“Go to who? Some guys were unavailable today. But, I don’t know if unavailable is the word, I wasn’t going to use them,” Showalter said. “We’re too early in the season to be throwing guys three out of four days. We said the whole offseason with the lockout and everything that we’re going to be careful.”
Although the bullpen decisions may have been questionable, Williams certainly didn’t receive any help from his defense.
With the tying run on third base, Lucius Fox laid a bunt down the first base line, Pete Alonso fielded and made a questionable underhand toss to home which wasn’t in time to get Dee Strange-Gordon out at home tying the game at two.
“Bang-bang play at home. Thought I made the right decision, thought I made the right play. If I were to throw it, I feel like it would be too quick and too close of a distance,” said the first baseman.
“Didn’t want to make a bad throw because the other runner is on base. Wanted to secure the baseball and make a good flip to [Tomas Nido]. Feel like I did that, just that he’s fast. I thought everything was clean, or at least it felt clean. Dee Gordon is one of the fastest players in the league. He got a good break on it, bang-bang play.”
Shortly thereafter, Alonso fielded a possible double play ball and threw it wide and nearly out of the reach of Francisco Lindor, loading the bases which ultimately led to Nelson Cruz driving in two runs on an RBI single up the middle.
“On the double play ball, I just missed the throw. Don’t know why, my feet were set, I fielded the ground ball cleanly,” said Alonso. “There was no rush, there was no need to rush. I felt like I was calm, cool and collected. I just missed the throw and as a result that kinda put the team in a really bad hole.”
The Mets late-inning collapse surely puts a sour taste in their mouths as they were within reach of starting the season perfect at 4-0.
However, the 162-game season is, as they say, a marathon, not a sprint. There are going to be ugly games like this and many of them.
As Alonso said, “That’s just baseball sometimes.”