The New York Mets’ losses in Game 1, 4, and 5 came down to crucial moments that exposed areas of weakness and need for them this offseason.
By Bryan Pol
In light of a thrilling comeback in the ninth inning on Sunday night against the New York Mets in Game 5 at Citi Field, the Kansas City Royals capped off their magical season by winning their first World Series title in 30 years, becoming the first team in baseball history to muster three wins in a World Series after trailing in the eighth inning or later in all of those victories.
The Royals, despite representing a small market, proved relentless all series long, manufacturing runs through timely, contact hitting that overwhelmed the National League champions, who boasted a stouter rotation whose only true fault was an erratic effort from Jacob deGrom in Game 2.
Between Harvey’s two starts in Games 1 and 5, Noah Syndergaard’s turn in Game 3, and Steven Matz’s third start this postseason in Game 4, the Mets managed three quality starts, pitching to a solid 3.60 ERA, allowing only six walks in 25 innings. Although not dominant—Harvey, with nine strikeouts in Game 5, was the only starter to accrue more than six punchouts against a team that swung and missed only three times all night against New York in Game 2—each aforementioned starter left the mound with their team either tied (Game 1) or holding a lead (Games 3, 4, and 5).
Alas, the Mets lost in light of uneven efforts from Jeurys Familia, who blew two saves in Games 1 and 5 and could not hold a lead in Game 4, Tyler Clippard’s unsightly penchant for yielding bases on balls (three all series, the two most costly coming in Game 4), and no shows in the Series from Daniel Murphy, whom nobody on the Dodgers and Cubs could get out with any consistency, and Yoenis Cespedes, whose torrid months of August and September were ancient history by roughly Game 4 of the NLDS onward.
While the Royals, lead by World Series MVP Salvador Perez, a tough out who hit .364 in the Series, are celebrating their first title in 30 years, delivering vengeance from their seven game Series loss to the San Francisco Giants last season, Mets fans are wallowing in the pondering of “what could have been,” given that they were two outs away in Game 1 and five outs away in Game 4 from making last night’s Game 5 a decisive elimination game in their favor.
Unfortunately, the Mets take little solace in returning to the Series fifteen years after their loss to the Yankees in 2000, especially since the result was pretty much the same: a five-game Series loss that looked far more competitive than the series length illustrates.
Ultimately, the Series boiled down to three moments that decided New York’s fate.
1. Alex Gordon Homers in Game 1 off Jeurys Familia
Met closer Jeurys Familia entered the ninth inning of Game 1 not having allowed a single run in the entire playoffs to that point, yielding only two hits and two walks in 9 2/3 innings of work, earning five saves in as many opportunities.
Against his first batter, Salvador Perez, Familia got the Royals’ catcher to ground out weakly to shortstop, and was set to face off against Alex Gordon, who was 0-for-2 with a walk to that point. In facing Kansas City’s eighth and ninth hitters, Familia and the Mets were two outs away from their first World Series win in fifteen years, their first road win in the Series in twenty-nine years.
Alas, Gordon, a three-time All-Star, had other plans.
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With the game now tied 4-4, the persistent, nagging, resilient Royals would lie in wait, as they do so well, for five more innings to score, which they later would on an Eric Hosmer sacrifice fly to seal a 5-4 victory, ending the game for the Royals in favored territory: sixteen of the past eighteen World Series victors, including the last five straight heading into the 2015 Series, had gone on to win a title.
As chance would have it, the Royals wound up being the seventeenth team to go on to win the Series after taking Game 1, all because they rattled a once invincible Familia, who has all offseason to contemplate how his performance—two blown saves and a failure to hold a lead in Game 4—essentially cost his team a championship.
2. Daniel Murphy’s Costly Error in Game 4
With each decisive blast, Daniel Murphy was adding another zero to his ledger by entering the offseason and free agency period on a tear for the ages: his ability to hit a homer in six straight games was an all-time postseason record. In winning the NLCS MVP, hitting .529 with 4 home runs and 6 runs batted in (crushing the ball to a blistering 1.249 OPS), Murphy faced the disheartening prospect of a six-day layoff impeding on his assault on the record books.
Consequently, Murphy’s layoff did, in fact, have an adverse effect on his propensity at the plate: for the Series, Murphy hit .150, managing only three hits in twenty at-bats. He did not muster an extra-base hit, and struck out seven times despite drawing five walks. Worse yet, Murphy’s power outage at the plate paled in comparison to what he could not pull off in the field in Game 4.
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With Familia forced to enter the game for a chance at a five-out save, the pressure was on to erase Tyler Clippard’s two walks after a lead-off ground out by Alcides Escobar. But just like that, Murphy charged past a routine ground ball from Eric Hosmer, allowing Ben Zobrist to score, tying the game at three-all. The gaffe opened the flood gates for two more runs to score in the inning, effacing a two-homer night from Michael Conforto and a great outing from Steven Matz, whose curveball was on before a shaky start to the sixth inning forced Terry Collins to resort to Jonathon Niese.
The Murphy error exploited a ghastly lack of range and shoddy glove of Murphy’s that Met fans already knew was looming, although nobody could have foreseen in just how crucial a moment Murphy’s ineptitude in the field would surface. To add insult to injury, ESPN.com reported that Murphy’s error was “the sixth-costliest in World Series history.” While not quite Bucknerian, Murphy’s mistake most certainly tops the list of Met postseason lowlights.
According to FOX Sports and Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, the Royals’ gameplan was to expose Murphy’s glove, force Lucas Duda and David Wright to make throws, and pressure Travis d’Arnaud to adjust to a Kansas City club with a penchant to run and steal bags (the Met catcher had not thrown out a single runner since September 30).
Clearly, the Royal blueprint worked to positive effect, as many of their rallies hinged on forcing the Mets’ defense to back itself into corners, evidenced largely in the Royals’ first offensive play in Game 1 that set the tone for the entire Series: an inside-the-park home run from Escobar triggered by Yoenis Cespedes’s inability to make a play on a long fly ball that hit the outfield wall, thanks in part to the Met centerfielder kicking the misplayed ball beyond Conforto’s reach.
Unfortunately, Murphy’s Bill Buckner moment and abysmal performance at the plate will hinder any chance he has of resigning with the club that drafted him in 2006, with Dilson Herrera waiting to claim Murphy’s position sooner than later to sure up a middle infield that was already hurting with Ruben Tejada out since the NLDS.
3. The Decision to Give Matt Harvey the Ball in the 9th in Game 5
In Game 5, the Dark Knight was ready to salvage Gotham and force the Series back to Kansas City for a Game 6 and a shot at redemption for Jacob deGrom, whose Game 2 loss thrust his team into an 0-2 hole heading back to Citi Field for Game 3. Matt Harvey’s Met legacy was set to receive its share of plaudits, more so given the ace’s desire to take the ball in the ninth after already spinning a masterpiece: eight innings of scoreless ball, in which Harvey scattered four hits and struck out nine. Despite a clean inning in the eighth, Tom Verducci reported that Royals players were ecstatic to see Harvey on the mound in the ninth, especially given his inability to locate his fastball, with his changeup and slider failing to yield positive results any longer. After a seven pitch at-bat from Lorenzo Cain, Harvey walked the Royal centerfielder, who promptly stole second base. Rather than yank him, Terry Collins kept his ace in the game, resulting in an Eric Hosmer RBI double that forced Jeurys Familia to enter the game under duress. [su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn6KY6uqaqs”] Two batters later, Hosmer would score from third after two groundouts, tying the game at 2-2, quickly extinguishing Harvey’s brilliance, adding another blown save to Familia’s now-tarnished World Series resume.
As they had in Game 1, the Royals waited patiently to pile on runs, as they eventually would in a five-run 12th inning that capped off a 7-2 clincher for Kansas City in Game 5.
While the Royals, deserving 2015 World Series champions, ended the season on a quest to prove they were baseball’s best, the Mets now enter a cloudy offseason where the players who got them to the mount—Daniel Murphy, Yoenis Cespedes, and Tyler Clippard—may not return, due largely to their shoddy play in the World Series entire.
Despite the result at season’s end, the Mets were a few plays and bounces going their way from World Series glory, a prospect that bodes well for a team that returns its entire rotation that is now playoff-tested and will learn from its World Series mistakes, a staff that gets stronger in light of Zack Wheeler’s return from Tommy John surgery at some point in 2016, which could succeed on the level of even the largest deadline deal come next July.
Bryan Pol
I am an English teacher, music and film aficionado, husband, father of two delightful boys, writer, sports fanatic, former Long Islander, and follower of Christ.
Based on my Long Island upbringing, I was groomed as a Yankees, Giants, Rangers, and Knicks fan, and picked up Duke basketball, Notre Dame football, and Tottenham Hotspur football fandom along the way.