Carlos Mendoza’s magic touch disappears at the worst possible time for Mets

Carlos Mendoza pitched the coach’s version of a two-hit shutout on Tuesday night, the first game he ever pitched in the postseason.

He had cleverly trusted his starting player Luis Severino and exploited him to the maximum. He got two bullpen attempts from Jose Butto and Ryne Stanek. He cleverly allowed Jesse Winker to start at DH, then substituted JD Martinez and together they drove in four runs.

He easily outperformed Brewers manager Pat Murphy and also made his playoff debut as captain. When Mendoza played chess, Murphy played Candyland. It was a nice start to Mendoza’s postseason career.

But baseball is so funny:

If this is a game of advantage, as we learn time and time again, it is also a game of dreaded vulnerability. Today’s genius is tomorrow’s abomination. Mendoza certainly already knew this. He has been in the game for many years. That doesn’t make it any less brutal when you get a bowlful of humble pie for the first time.

“We’ve been knocked down and we’ve shown all year that we have the ability to get back up,” Mendoza said Wednesday night after his Mets lost an eighth-inning lead under a barrage of questionable plays from Mendoza and questionable pitches from Phil Maton and a… 5-3 game for the Brewers, once again reducing their season to a one-game final exam.

“We got beat today,” Mendoza said. “They are a good ball club. We’re ready to go.”

If the Mets had taken advantage of several golden opportunities in the first seven innings, they might have been able to build a bigger cushion than the 3-2 lead they had in the eighth inning. If Pete Alonso hadn’t tripped over his bat in the first inning, costing the Mets a run they certainly could have used later, things might have felt a little different by a two-run margin.

But managers can’t handle it like that. They have to make do with what they have. Sean Manaea had done a solid job for the Mets in five innings, hitting 86 pitches, and Mendoza let the first domino fall when he decided not to ask Manaea to do what he had asked Severino 24 hours earlier: a sixth inning to eat. So instead of needing nine outs from the bullpen like he did on Tuesday, he needed twelve.

He managed half of it easily, with Reed Garrett and Ryne Stanek doing it with six ups and six downs – with help from Francisco Alvarez, who picked off a would-be base stealer. Seven did that.

And then came the eighth.

Mendoza had three options. He could go to Edwin Diaz to face the Brewers’ 1-2-3 hitters – but that would be the only inning he could use Diaz, and then he’d have to figure out the ninth with someone else. He could stick with Stanek, but Stanek only threw more than one inning twice all year and only once as a Met – and that was in a 7-0 loss.

Stanek also had allowed eight home runs in 55 ¹/₃ innings as a Mariner and Met this year, and his fastball, although it hit 98 on Wednesday, is often a treat for fastball hitters — like the Brewers’ young star Jackson Chourio. who had already hit a home run once and was leading in the eighth.

“I didn’t like the duel with Chourio,” Mendoza later explained. “He’s a really good fastball hitter.”

Behind door number three was Maton, who had allowed exactly one home run in 28²/₃ innings as a Met – and none since July 12.

“We wanted the match between Maton and Chourio,” Mendoza said, and that’s what he got. And soon Chourio blasted a two-seamer well over the right field fence, tying the game 3-0. Maton then allowed a buzzer-beating single to Blake Perkins. He was briefly saved by a double play, then allowed another single, this time to Willy Adames.

Mendoza should have taken him there. Maton’s curve, usually his deadliest throw, was wrong – it hung one after the other. Then he tacked another on to Garrett Mitchell, and suddenly the Mets are in a familiar position, one game away from extinction.

That’s not everything on Mendoza, but enough of it. Managers make dozens of decisions in the game. Not once do you ask yourself, “How can I screw this up the most?”

Sometimes it happens that way anyway. Sometimes the dice turn ice cold, even after rolling nothing but sevens for just a day. Your stack of chips will disappear in an instant. Hard job. Especially in October.