NEW YORK — The fantasies of Mets fans were expected to be realized in the evening of Friday. In the year Max Scherzer signed a three-year $130 million contract with New York and the game that opened the series for wild cards was the type of match Mets fans hoped the Hall of Famer who was to come could dominate, a key event that set the stage for a team heading into the playoffs.
But those hopes were destroyed when Scherzer was unable to keep his cool in his game in the game against San Diego Padres, allowing seven earned runs with seven hitsand giving an all-time high of four home runs and striking out only four batters over 4 2/3 innings of 7-1 defeat by New York.
After Scherzer quit his Citi Field mound The moments of struggle replayed on his head.
“This is going to be a late night for me,” Scherzer stated.
The injury began in the opening inning when Padres designated hitter Josh Bell slugged a 419-foot opposite-field homer that brought home Jurickson Profar. Infielder Trent Grisham added on in the second innings by hitting a home run into right field, extending the Padres lead to 3-1. The last straw for Scherzer’s day occurred in the fifth after which Profar hit a homer in left field that scored Ha-Seong-Kim along with Austin Nola, followed by an Manny Machado solo blast to left-center field and sending the Mets pitcher off to a roar of cheers from the 41,621 fans who gathered at Citi Field.
The Mets have had 101 wins during the regular season and held the lead for 174 days , but ended up being a wild-card team — will now be facing defeat on Saturday as the Padres sending the former Cy Young award winner Blake Snell to the mound.
“We ended up with the same record as somebody else in our division, and we’re getting an opportunity now,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said. “We’ll get one tomorrow to right the ship.”
Scherzer was not without a struggle with his control during Friday’s game; the seven runs earned were among the highest allowed by Scherzer in a postseason contest and his previous best was in the 2011 ALCS loss as a player of the Detroit Tigers.
After looking over the footage from the beginning, Scherzer said his fastball didn’t have the same pattern of motion as it normally does, and was sinking instead of rising.
“I wasn’t able to command that fastball the way I usually can,” Scherzer declared. “That’s my bread and butter to be able to set up everything else. When my fastball’s flat and then running, that’s usually when I get hit a lot. Obviously, tonight I got hit a lot.”
This was only the third bad start from Scherzer who had previously pitched four runs, 9 hits and two homers over 5 2/3 innings in the game against Atlanta Braves in a crucial start that resulted in New York falling out of the race for the division championship.
Scherzer was previously on two occasions in the list of injured players. One in May due to an oblique strain, and an additional one in September, due to tiredness in the side of his left. If asked if injuries played an impact on his recent struggle, Scherzer said they did not influence his performance.
“I had a feel for what was going on in the Atlanta start,” Scherzer stated. “I thought I made the adjustment to get me right. Tonight, I don’t know why the fastball ran. I don’t know why I didn’t have my good fastball, the way I can usually pitch and locate.”
The team’s performance was starkly different from the performance of Padres pitcher Yu Darvish, who dominated the Mets lineup throughout the game, allowing only one hit and one run during seven innings.
“Obviously Max, with the expectations that he has for himself and what he’s done for us and throughout baseball, but Darvish is on top of his game and we knew that was going to be a challenge,” Showalter stated. “He’s just got so many things you have to defend.”
That Darvish was in the his best, which meant that the Mets required Scherzer to play to the Padres star. However, he came up short.
“Baseball can take you to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows,” Scherzer declared. “This is one of the lowest of lows.”
