Milwaukee comes up two outs short as Williams loses it in ninth
The Milwaukee Brewers and New York Mets met this evening in a winner-take-all elimination game, the only game three of any of the Wild Card series this year. It was a game that non-partisan fans would surely call a classic, a pitchers’ duel between unlikely forces (the rookie Tobias Myers and the 35-year-old Jose Quintana) with unlikely heroes.
But for Brewer fans, this game will go down in infamy; a game in which they held the Mets for eight innings, in which they played perfect, dramatic baseball up until the very last moment before a meltdown from one of the franchise’s icons handed the fanbase one of the most painful losses in team history. Just like that, Milwaukee’s magical season was over.
Francisco Lindor got things started with a hustle double to center field. He was nearly thrown out at second, but Brice Turang couldn’t handle the throw and Lindor was safe. But Myers struck out Mark Vientos and Brandon Nimmo and got Pete Alonso to fly out to end the inning. Preventing Lindor from advancing after the leadoff double was a big early moment.
Jackson Chourio, whose contributions to this team can barely be put into words, led off the bottom of the first with a single. He moved to second when William Contreras grounded out a couple of batters later but was stranded there after a popout from Willy Adames.
Myers locked in in the second inning, getting a Jose Iglesias lineout, a Jesse Winker groundout, and a Starling Marte lineout on just 10 pitches. Gary Sánchez led off the bottom of the second with a double, but like the Mets in the first inning, the Brewers were unable to advance him any further, as Rhys Hoskins and Sal Frelick struck out and Joey Ortiz popped out to end the threat.
Tyrone Taylor flew out to right center to lead off the third, and Myers followed with a strikeout of Francisco Alvarez. With two outs, Lindor knocked his second hit of the game—a single into right—and advanced to second on a pitch in the dirt. Vientos hit one pretty hard but it held up for Frelick on the warning track, and Myers had another scoreless inning.
The red-hot Turang led off the bottom of the third with a hard liner to second base, but Iglesias made a nice play and threw Turang out. After Chourio was retired on a soft liner to center, Blake Perkins reached on a two-out infield hit, but Contreras grounded out to end the inning.
Myers worked through a quick 1-2-3 inning in the top of the fourth, and he was cruising at this point. Adames reached on an infield single to lead off the bottom of the inning, stole a base, and reached third on a groundout, but he was stranded there when Frelick grounded out to Quintana.
Myers hit Winker with a 1-2 pitch to put New York’s leadoff man aboard in the fifth. But he struck out Marte and Taylor and got Alvarez on a pop out, and he was through five scoreless with just two hits allowed—both to Lindor—and only 66 pitches, bringing the sell-out crowd to its feet in the process.
Ortiz and Turang started the bottom of the fifth with groundouts. Chourio drew a two-out walk and stole second with Perkins at the plate, and Perkins worked a long at-bat, but he grounded out to shortstop to end the inning. Quintana hadn’t been quite as efficient as Myers on the night and dealt with a little more traffic, but he was just as effective, as both pitchers had five scoreless innings.
And five innings is all Myers got, as he was pulled in the sixth in favor of Trevor Megill. I understand the reasoning, even if I don’t love it—that’s baseball in 2024—but I have to respect Murphy for making the (analytically sound) move even after catching some grief after making a similar move with Freddy Peralta in game one. It worked, at least in the short term: Megill pitched a 1-2-3 sixth, setting up the heart of the Brewers’ order in the bottom of the inning.
But Quintana was still going strong. He got Contreras to fly out to center, struck out Adames, and struck out Sánchez to work through an easy sixth. At this point, it felt like both offenses were pressing, desperately searching for something, anything, to get them going.
A surprise face took the mound for the Brewers in the seventh: righty Nick Mears, who has struggled this season, was asked to face the middle of the Mets’ order. He rewarded his manager’s confidence by striking out Alonso, getting Iglesias on a groundout, and striking out Winker. Nick Mears! Who would have thought? (It was also perhaps worth noting that at this point in the game, Freddy Peralta—who started game one two days ago—began warming in the bullpen.)
Quintana was taken out in the bottom of the seventh, and lightning struck American Family Field. José Buttó, New York’s new pitcher, was greeted by pinch-hitter Jake Bauers, in for Hoskins, and he worked a full count before launching one into the right-field bleachers to break the deadlock. But the Brewers weren’t done there: Sal Frelick, of all people—Sal Frelick, who crashed into a wall and looked like he might have broken his back less than a week ago, Sal Frelick, who hasn’t homered since hitting his only home runs of the season in back-to-back games on May 14 and 15—hit a shot down the right-field line to double the Brewers’ lead.
Buttó got Ortiz to line out to short, and the Mets—quickly running out of opportunities—played their trump card, bringing in closer Edwin Díaz with one out in the seventh. Díaz started by walking Turang, who stole second base. Chourio flew out to shallow left and Díaz also walked Perkins, bringing up Contreras—of course, walking out to “Díaz’s music”—and Díaz again fell behind, and Alvarez watched as Turang and Perkins executed a double steal. Díaz did manage to strike out Contreras to end the inning, but he needed 20 pitches to get the last two outs of the inning.
The Brewers had a choice to make in the eighth inning, as their usual pitcher in this spot, Megill, had pitched the sixth. In a game full of surprises, it really was Peralta who entered in a set-up man role. He started by getting Marte to ground out to second, then got Taylor to fly out to right, and got Alvarez to ground out to third base. Peralta, who hadn’t made a relief appearance in over two years, looked utterly comfortable and guaranteed that the Brewers would hand the game to Devin Williams with a lead in the ninth. That lead would remain just two; Díaz looked much better in the eighth and got Adames, Sánchez, and Bauers in order.
Williams was in for the ninth versus the top of the Mets’ order, and Lindor, who is likely to finish second in MVP voting in the National League, did his best to keep New York’s hopes alive by drawing an eight-pitch leadoff walk. Williams came back to strike out Vientos, and he got ahead of Nimmo but an 0-2 pitch was lined up the middle for a base hit, putting runners on the corners with one out for Alonso. Williams fell behind Alonso, and the worst happened: he lined a changeup, left right over the middle, just over the wall in right to flip the scoreboard and put the Mets up 3-2.
Williams got Iglesias to ground out, hit Winker (who stole second), and Marte lined a ground ball through the right side, scoring Winker from second—a huge insurance run. Williams was removed from the game in favor of Joe Ross. Ross needed just one pitch to end the inning, but now the Brewers would need a miracle comeback of their own to keep their postseason going.
Frelick led off the ninth against David Peterson, who—in a depleted Mets bullpen—was making his first relief appearance of the season, and Frelick wasn’t quite ready for things to end yet: he lined a single into left to start the inning. But Peterson struck out Ortiz, and Turang lined a ball hard to short which Lindor turned into a double play. Ironically, if Turang had made the weaker contact he’d been making for most of the second half he probably could have beat the throw. The game ended with Chourio on deck.
This was such an upside-down game. Jake Bauers, Sal Frelick, Tobias Myers, and Nick Mears were heroes. Devin Williams, the National League’s best closer and one of the most dominant relievers of the last half-decade, utterly melted down a day after looking dominant in a different elimination game.
This is a painful loss, one of the hardest to take in the 50-plus-year history of the team. It’s almost harder to take because you can’t criticize the decision to put Williams into the game. Of course that was the right decision. It just didn’t work.
There will be more postmortems and wrap-ups and all sorts of things, but for now, we’ll have to deal with the pain of this loss, laid upon us when we were so close. Sports can be cruel. Fandom can be agonizing.