Biggest Mets mistake in Game 2 loss against the Brewers is a study in Chaos Theory

Was asking Phil Maton to pitch yet again in the 8th inning to blame for why the New York Mets lost on Wednesday? If you’re questioning this, you aren’t giving Carlos Mendoza enough credit. It wasn’t the biggest mistake of the night. Although after the groundout and even the single by Willy Adames to put the go-ahead run on base, pulling Maton for someone else was reasonable.

The problem is the Mets are working shorthanded with their bullpen. One can and should argue even an overused Maton is a better option than many of the others left in the bullpen. That’s why the biggest mistake of the night wasn’t going to Maton. It came much earlier.

The Mets should have pushed Sean Manaea a little deeper into the game

John Harper summed it up well.

There’s a lot of chaos theory in what happened on Wednesday. By using Maton as much as they did over the weekend against the Brewers, they set him up poorly for the postseason. 15 pitches in Friday’s game, another 23 in Saturday’s. He managed to get in another dozen against the Atlanta Braves on Monday while recording only a single out.

We can extend further. The use of Edwin Diaz on back-to-back days throwing 26 pitches on Sunday and another 40 in Monday’s performance made him a less favorable candidate for more than 3 outs in this game. They understandably felt he needed some work on Sunday. On Monday, the season was on the line.

No, it’s not the use of the relievers heading into the playoffs we should be most frustrated about. It was lifting Sean Manaea after 86 pitches.

There’s no telling how the next 14-20 pitches could have gone. For all we know, the game gets tied one pitch into the sixth inning. Manaea was throwing strikes, getting a couple calls to go his way, and Milwaukee didn’t even risk a single stolen base against him. The ace of the staff in 2024 deserved a little more benefit of the doubt to go as deep into the sixth as sense would have allowed.

Not giving Reed Garrett or Ryne Stanek a little more leeway comes into question as well. They threw 12 and 11 pitches respectively. While the desire to give a reliever a clean inning is there, it backfired mightily on the Mets in this one.

Now the Mets stare at a situation where if they don’t win on Thursday, they go home. Managerial decisions were hardly the lone reason why they lost. A classic 2 for 11 with runners in scoring position by the Mets hitters deserve some of the blame. The team didn’t muster a single extra base. A smaller ball style was effective in Game 1 to help them score 8 times. In Game 2, they lacked the clutch gene.