Five Hits at Freddy’s Advance Mets to NLDS

For eight innings on Thursday night, the New York Mets’ bats barely spoke above a whisper. Unfortunately for the Milwaukee Brewers, the ninth inning was the charm in Game 3, as the Mets loudly ended the Brew Crew’s 2024 season with a 4-2 win, largely thanks to a dramatic opposite-field homer from Pete Alonso.

The climactic action may have involved a trio of round-trippers, but for six innings, we got a classic pitchers’ duel between two starters with very different styles. Starring for the Mets was Jose Quintana, who played the crafty veteran lefty trope to perfection here, throwing leisurely fastballs and sinkers where hitters could neither drive them or ignore them, while mixing in a healthy dose of changeups and curves that threatened the dirt.

ZiPS was a bit worried about how Quintana matched up against the Brewers coming into the game; while he’s maintained enough of a reverse platoon split over a long career to be confident in it, Milwaukee has a lot of right-handed hitters who can make a southpaw’s evening unpleasant in a hurry. But William Contreras and Rhys Hoskins went hitless, and ultimately it was the lefties who provided most of the team’s offense. It certainly wasn’t from lack of trying; Brewers hitters offered at 60% of Quintana’s fastballs, including more than half of the ones thrown out of the zone. What’s more, they connected with every Quintana fastball they swung at, but it only resulted in two hits. Quintana didn’t throw a single fastball for a called strike all evening.

Tobias Myers took the opposite approach. Where Quintana tried to baffle hitters, Myers decided to challenge them, aggressively using his fastball and daring the Mets to go along with its ride. Combining that backspin with extra velocity for the special occasion, Myers struck out five in five innings, allowing just two hits. Matthew Trueblood beat me to the visual, so credit where credit is due:

Tobias Myers is sitting 94.5 instead of 92.5, and his average iVB is over 20". Dude has the smell. @ByMcCullough Tobias Myers is a pitcher for the Brewers. pic.twitter.com/iCybCcfS1N

— Matthew Trueblood (@MATrueblood) October 4, 2024

Myers was pulled after 66 pitches, a decision largely in keeping with manager Pat Murphy’s M.O.; he has frequently had a quick hook with Myers, though the young hurler was allowed to face the order a third time through (or at least begin to) several times in September. Unlike the quick hooks on pitchers like Blake Snell and José Berríos, which have become notorious in certain circles, the one pitcher who struggled for the Brewers was the one everyone, traditionalist or otherwise, would have had in the game at that point. But let’s not skip ahead quite yet…

The Brewers got three more shutout innings from three relievers. First up was Trevor Megill, who did his usual shtick: throw some 99 mph fastballs, then cause batters to flail on a couple of knuckle-curves. Nick Mears, who was quietly picked up in July from the Rockies, continued to show why you shouldn’t dismiss a player whose peripherals suddenly improve; he dispatched his assigned Mets in the seventh almost as easily as Megill had an inning earlier. And since random bullpen cameos are a thing in the MLB Postseason Cinematic Universe, the Brewers’ Game 1 starter, Freddy Peralta, came in to throw a hitless inning in the eighth.

Meanwhile, after six innings of Quintana, the Brewers fared better against José Buttó in the seventh. While ZiPS isn’t really a fan of Jake Bauers, it fully endorsed him pinch-hitting against Buttó; the computer had him with a projected OPS (.864) nearly 70 points better than Hoskins in the same situation (.796). A Buttó changeup tarried too long in the strike zone, and Bauers put Milwaukee on the scoreboard in loud fashion:

Jake Bauers with the 5th pinch-hit HR in a winner-take-all game, joining:

2020 NLCS G7 Enrique Hernández
2016 NLDS G5 Chris Heisey
2003 NLCS G7 Troy O’Leary
2001 ALDS G5 David Justice

Bauers’ is the first of those to give his team a lead https://t.co/ZKFrlOtBAs

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 4, 2024

One pitch later, Sal Frelick committed offensive plagiarism, hitting his own home run to right field to put the Brewers up 2-0:

SAL FRELICK GOES BACK-TO-BACK!!! #POSTSEASON pic.twitter.com/OqZMZYmRZ5

— MLB (@MLB) October 4, 2024

In a move I had mixed feelings about at the time — and still do — the Mets brought in closer Edwin Díaz to shut things down. On an emotional level, I totally get it; things suddenly looked liked they were getting out of control, and Díaz is the best reliever the Mets have to play the disciplinarian teacher who has to intervene when the substitute teacher is overwhelmed. As an analyst, I’m just not sure it was the right move. While this was a must-win game for the Mets, and they had to prevent further scoring, the bases being empty lowered the temperature of the situation considerably. I like closers being used aggressively, but in this case, I wonder if there was still enough time left to save Díaz for a “hotter” situation. I could very easily be convinced I’m wrong.

In any case, Díaz ended up turning up the thermostat. He looked a bit like the Retro Heart Attack-Inducing Mariners Díaz, walking Brice Turang and Blake Perkins in a bout of sudden wildness. A Contreras whiff salvaged the situation, but things were on the precipice of ugliness.

The mood of Mets fans on Twitter — and presumably elsewhere that I couldn’t see — was pretty glum at this point, and Peralta’s hitless eighth inning didn’t help. But things were about to take a turn.

Devin Williams came in to close things out in the ninth, a quest that got off to a poor start when he had trouble finishing off Francisco Lindor; Lindor worked a 1-2 count into a walk thanks to some fouls and a refusal to bite on three pitches off the edge of the zone. Williams seemed to have righted the ship with a quick Mark Vientos strikeout, but a Brandon Nimmo single set up a first-and-third situation for Alonso, precisely the hitter the Mets would have wanted up in that situation if they could have chosen. With the count 3-1, Williams left his changeup just too close to Alonso’s bat, and the Polar Bear hit arguably the loudest home run of his career in the quietest way, a little opposite field 363-footer that was still big enough to crush the dreams of an entire city:

Pete Alonso. CLUTCH.#Postseason | #LGM

pic.twitter.com/F5Lo6qip2U

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) October 4, 2024

And the pain wasn’t quite over for Brewers fans. After a Jose Iglesias groundout, Jesse Winker got hit by his second pitch of the night. He sought revenge by stealing second and after a Starling Marte single that drove him home as an insurance run, he spiked his helmet in what might have been the hardest thrown pitch of the evening:

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? I AM! #POSTSEASON pic.twitter.com/RLE4C4zrfe

— MLB (@MLB) October 4, 2024

Milwaukee’s last chance was anti-climactic. Frelick led off the inning with a single, but after David Peterson struck out Joey Ortiz, Turang grounded into a season-ending double play.

And with that, the last of the four divisional series matchups is set. The Mets now head to Philadelphia to face off with the well-rested NL East champions.