2022 MLB Playoffs: Four questions as Mets, Padres face winner-take-all Game 3

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

It’s time for the two best words in sports: Game 3.

On Sunday, at the Queens baseballing cauldron, the Mets and Padres will face off in the first Wild-Card Series winner-take-all contest. New York will send Chris Bassitt to the hill. San Diego will counter with Joe Musgrove. If you’ve ever wanted to watch 40,000 New Yorkers vomit from dread simultaneously, make sure you tune in.

And because the three other Wild-Card Series ended in sweeps — does a two-game series win really count as a sweep? — Mets-Pads is the only postseason baseball on the docket Sunday. It feels appropriate, too: Two teams with legitimate World Series aspirations in spring training that have journeyed through extraordinarily tumultuous seasons butting heads in a newfangled play-in round for the honor of getting lambasted by the Dodgers next week. So fatalist! So fun!

Anyway, here are four questions going into Sunday’s pivotal Game 3.

Will we see a Juan Soto moment?

In 2019, the 20-year-old, baby-faced assassin set October ablaze with a sunshine grin and numerous mantelpiece moments. The eighth-inning, go-ahead single in the Wild-Card Game against Milwaukee. The crowd-silencing, game-tying blast off Clayton Kershaw in Game 5 of the NLDS. A pair of timely World Series big flies off Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander, two of the era’s most dominant pitchers.

As Soto and his Nationals teammates gallivanted through the streets of D.C. during their ensuing championship parade, it seemed like the gregarious slugger would call the nation’s capital home for years to come.

But that was a pandemic ago. Times change, and so do rosters. Now Soto finds himself in the middle of a different order, in the middle of a different postseason. The Padres gave up their entire farm system for a reason. They know Soto has the potential to single-handedly alter a game, a series or a season. He has done it before.

And Sunday against Bassitt, San Diego hopes he can do it again.

Can Chris Bassitt keep the Padres’ offense in check?

Soto has faced Bassitt only three times (2-3 with two singles), which is not nearly enough of a sample to glean anything. But over the course of his career, Bassitt has struggled at times against patient left-handed hitters with light-tower power. Sound familiar?

Yordan Álvarez is 4-for-10 with three homers against Bassitt. Joey Gallo, Daniel Vogelbach and Carlos Santana are a combined 9-for-26 with five homers. Most notably, Padres slugger Josh Bell is 2-for-5 with a handful of long balls vs. Bassitt. Between Soto, Bell, second baseman Jake Cronenworth and center fielder Trent Grisham (two homers already this series), the Padres have a ton of lefty (or, in Bell’s case, switch) hitters more than happy to wait Bassitt out for a pitch they can drive.

Last Sunday, in his final outing of the regular season with the Mets’ division hopes on the line in Atlanta, Bassitt cratered under the pressure, allowing four runs on three walks in just 2⅔ innings. In hindsight, he admitted that he was trying to do a little too much and pushed himself out of his comfort zone. 

Following Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom is no simple job, but Bassitt did it admirably over the regular season’s final few months. The Mets will hope he learned from his failures in Atlanta; their season depends on it. With Scherzer and deGrom unavailable and no other traditional starters even on the wild-card roster, the Mets cannot afford another early shower for Bassitt.

How much can Edwin Díaz give?

The Mets have leaned on their flame-throwing closer all season, relying on Díaz’s utter brilliance late in games to paper over what has been an otherwise … sufficient bullpen. On Saturday, with the Mets up a run, skipper Buck Showalter made the unorthodox decision to bring in his ninth-inning guy for the bottom of the seventh.

Now, using one’s best reliever against the heart of an opponent’s order, regardless of inning, is a rational and sabermetrically supported strategy. But against the Padres in Game 2, Showalter brought Díaz in to face San Diego’s 8-9-1 hitters.

So when the Citi Field scoreboard shut off and the first notes of “Narco” played as part of Díaz’s now iconic walk-out theatrics, the sold-out Mets crowd appeared somewhat confused, almost stupefied. Timmy Trumpets? In the seventh? That’s not what rip-roaring Australian house music is all about!

Even so, besides a lone single from San Diego catcher Austin Nola, Díaz breezed through the Padres in the seventh. Then the Mets exploded for four runs in a bottom of the inning that took a whopping 45 minutes to complete. Despite the lengthy layoff, Díaz reemerged from the dugout to pitch the eighth, retiring Manny Machado and Bell before giving way to Adam Ottavino.

In all, Díaz threw 28 pitches on the evening, many of which were relatively unnecessary. After the game, Showalter confirmed that Díaz would be ready for Game 3, but it’s completely reasonable to question whether the Mets needed their best bullpen arm to come back out and waste precious bullets with a five-run lead.

If Díaz’s odd Saturday outing limits him Sunday — at all, in any way — Showalter’s off-kilter usage of his closer will be an enormous storyline should the Padres advance.

How will the Padres use Josh Hader?

Like a great, white shark with long, blond hair, Hader has been quietly lurking in the Citi Field bullpen the past two nights, patiently waiting to strike. Thanks to a pair of blowout-ish games, the Padres haven’t had to deploy their best bullpen arm yet this series.

Acquired one day before the August deadline for fellow lefty reliever Taylor Rogers, Hader struggled mightily in his first few outings for San Diego. Actually, “struggled mightily” doesn’t properly describe it. We’re talking bride-fainting-at-the-altar levels of disaster, waiter-sneezing-in-the-soup levels of flubbery. In his first seven outings, Hader allowed 12 runs in 4⅔ innings. That’s a 23.14 ERA for those of you counting at home.

But since a six-run catastrophe against the Royals on Aug. 28, Hader has seemed to figure things out, allowing just one run in his past 12 outings for the Pads. Presumably, skipper Bob Melvin could use Hader for more than three outs, though the closer hasn’t worked more than a single inning all season. 

Still, desperate times call for desperate measures, and if Melvin thinks pushing Hader past his comfort zone is his team’s best shot to close things out, he won’t blink.

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. Follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.

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