Examining the Mets’ late-game bullpen decisions in loss that forces decisive Game 3

MILWAUKEE — As the New York Mets pinballed between the Atlanta Braves and Milwaukee Brewers over the past week, they’d banished any thoughts of fatigue. The adrenaline of their postseason push, the momentum of their late-season magic, could carry them deeper into October.

Late Wednesday, six outs away from their first postseason series win in nine years, the limitations imposed by their schedule caught up with them.

Jackson Chourio and Garrett Mitchell each took setup man Phil Maton deep in a three-run eighth inning, and the Brewers came back to stun the Mets 5-3 in Game 2 of this best-of-three Wild Card Series. Jose Quintana will face Tobias Myers in the decisive Game 3 on Thursday evening.

“We got punched today,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “We’ll get right back.”

So much of the night had gone according to plan for Mendoza and the Mets. They’d scored early with one in the first and two in the second, and they’d consistently applied pressure to Milwaukee’s pitching staff. Sean Manaea rebounded from Chourio’s leadoff home run in the first to hold the lead. And the first two pitchers out of the bullpen were sharp, with Reed Garrett and Ryne Stanek facing the minimum in scoreless frames.

That got the Mets to the bottom of the eighth with a one-run advantage and the top of the Brewers’ order coming up, starting with Chourio.

Two factors influenced the Mets’ decision to turn to Maton for the eighth even though he’d be pitching for the fourth time in five days. First, though closer Edwin Díaz was available, the Mets didn’t want to use him for more than three outs, given Díaz’s heavy usage of late. (Mendoza said, “We were just going to keep it at one inning today,” and Díaz said he was told to be ready to secure four outs if necessary.)

Second, they liked Maton’s cutter against Chourio’s swing. Chourio’s expected numbers against cutters were worse than those against fastballs and sliders: Of the 22 home runs he’d hit up to that point this season, nine had been on fastballs, four on sliders and none on cutters.

That’s why they went with Maton over keeping Stanek and his hard four-seam fastball in the game, and that’s why they preferred to hold Díaz for the middle of the order in the ninth.

“The whole time we were going through the situation, we wanted a Maton-Chourio matchup,” Mendoza said. “It just didn’t work.”

Maton had earned his way into the primary setup role by pitching lights out since coming over from the Tampa Bay Rays midway through the season. New York has leaned on him heavily this week. He got five outs Saturday and three more Sunday, and he was back out to protect the lead in the eighth Monday, eventually giving up two runs.

He felt ready to pitch Wednesday, even if it meant a fourth appearance in five days.

“I feel great. It’s playoff baseball,” he said. “Adrenaline flowing, everything is feeling good.”

Chourio took a 1-1 cutter up in the zone out to right field for his second opposite-field homer of the night. At the time, Maton had not surrendered a homer in his last 108 batters.

He’d serve up another four batters later to Mitchell, who had entered as a pinch runner two innings prior. That came on a curveball up.

“He left a lot of pitches in the middle of the zone,” Mendoza said. “The overall stuff was OK, even though we asked a lot out of him.”

The Mets’ lack of a reliable lefty bit them against Mitchell, who hit a walk-off homer against them last season. New York has shied away from Danny Young in key spots of late because of his control issues, and while Mendoza said pregame that starter David Peterson would be available out of the pen, he changed course postgame.“He was not available,” he said. “He was not even in the conversation.”

Milwaukee’s eighth-inning rally put a spotlight on all the runs the Mets left on the bases. They could have pushed across a second run in the opening frame if Pete Alonso hadn’t tripped over his bat on the way to first, permitting the Brewers an easy double play. The Mets had a runner on second with nobody out in the fourth and with two outs in the fifth. They didn’t score. They had the first two men on in the sixth and a leadoff man on in the eighth. They didn’t score.

“I thought we had really good at-bats,” Mendoza said. “We just didn’t get the big hit today.”

The Mets have talked of playing playoff baseball for weeks now, of playing with the urgency the postseason demands over the final stretch of September just to arrive there. Thursday presents that challenge in the starkest terms possible: Win or go home.

“We’ve been responding to adversity all year,” Alonso said. “I’m really excited for this challenge. This is what the playoffs are all about.”

(Photo of Phil Maton: John Fisher / Getty Images)