2022 MLB Playoffs: Joe Musgrove silences Mets, sends Padres to NLDS

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

NEW YORK — Joe Musgrove’s ear was soaking wet. And so were everyone else’s.

As the San Diego Padres doused one another in gallons and gallons of adult beverage, Musgrove stood in the center of the mayhem with sunglasses on and a million-dollar smile stretched across face. Cool as a cucumber, drenched as could be.

While the internet and baseball world will forever remember Sunday’s NL Wild-Card Game 3 as the “Wet Ear Game,” thanks to Mets manager Buck Showalter’s decision to have the umpiring crew examine the Padres starter’s right ear for illicit substances, elated, booze-drenched gentlemen celebrating the night away in Citi Field’s visitors locker room will take away a whole lot more than that.

That’s because the Padres are headed to the NLDS to face the juggernaut Dodgers.

After a historically tumultuous season — one punctuated by their franchise shortstop falling off a motorcycle and then testing positive for PEDs — the Padres quite simply outplayed their hosts in their house Sunday. The 6-0 final score doesn’t fully capture how utterly lifeless the Mets looked in the winner-take-all game. 

It was a stomping. A romp. A complete coming apart of a 101-win, $280 million team. It was a total embarrassment for the Mets — and a night to cherish forever for the Padres.

No matter what was on Musgrove’s ear — sweat, sticky stuff, hot sauce — the fact is the San Diego kid carved up the Mets like thin-sliced pastrami all night long. Relying on his usual array of cutters, four-seamers, sliders and curveballs, the 29-year-old righty breezed his way through New York’s lineup and into his city’s sports lore forever.

Across seven shutout innings, Musgrove allowed just one hit — a sharp single to Pete Alonso in the fifth — and set down five by strikeout. A Starling Marte walk to lead off the seventh was the only other blemish on his night. Musgrove avoided barrels better than Mario in Donkey Kong and limited the Mets to two batted balls over 100 mph. Like his rotation-mate Yu Darvish in Game 1, Musgrove never offered the home crowd even a glimmer of hope.

It helped that the Pads struck early. After a ho-hum, 1-2-3 first inning against Mets starter Chris Bassitt, San Diego looked set to go down just as easily a frame later. Despite a leadoff knock from Josh Bell, Bassitt bounced back by swiftly retiring Jake Cronenworth and Wil Myers on a pair of groundouts. But then came Ha-Seong Kim for an at-bat that would completely change the complexion of the game.

With Bassitt up 1-2, the Mets hurler’s PitchCom system began to malfunction, resulting in multiple miscommunications with his catcher, Tomás Nido. After a huddle on the mound, Bassitt proceeded to walk Kim and the next batter, Trent Grisham. That’s when Austin Nola, San Diego’s nine-hole guy and light-hitting catcher, roped a single into left field to plate two and give the Padres a lead they’d never relinquish.

All night, Padres hitters did their best to mess with Bassitt’s comfort level. They stepped out, called time, made the right-hander wait. The strategy worked. Bassitt lasted just four innings, allowing three runs on three walks and three hits.

There’s no MVP award for the wild-card round, but if there were, it would belong to Grisham. After a shocking pair of dingers against Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom in the first two games, the stocky center fielder drove in San Diego’s third run Sunday with a liner up the middle in the fourth. It was a downright shocking series performance from a hitter who batted a putrid .184 in the regular season.

“We’re all human, man,” Grisham said in the postgame celebration. “But there were people in this room who really believed in me, who put their faith in me, and I really owe ‘em that.”

Amidst the chaos and the fountains of champagne, Grisham looked more relieved than elated, in relative disbelief at the whole situation, overwhelmed by how much his fortunes had changed in just a few weeks’ time. 

A few feet away stood Juan Soto, waterfalling a full bottle of fizzy into his mouth. The Padres’ big deadline acquisition has underwhelmed relative to his supersonic standards since his blockbuster move west. But with two runners in scoring position in the eighth against Mets fire-balling maestro Edwin Díaz, Soto collected his first signature moment as a Padre, putting the game away with a two-RBI poke down the left-field line.

A frame later, another Padres trade piece (honestly, that’s the whole team), Josh Hader, finished things up with a breezy ninth inning. The Padres stormed the mound, and the Mets trudged off the field, headed home for the winter.

The enduring narrative of this series will be that the Mets bungled it. That’s fair and true and surely a huge part of the story, but someone actually had to beat them. And the Padres did. The Mets played bad baseball this weekend, but a team can be only as bad as the opposing pitcher, and Musgrove made the Mets look hapless all night Sunday.

Now the Padres, a team that completely capitulated in an embarrassing, late-summer collapse last season, get to host the first postseason game at Petco Park since 2006. Theirs is a fan base rejuvenated by increased financial commitment from ownership, the departure of the city’s NFL franchise and a squad that has journeyed further into October (2020 rubbish aside) than any other since 1998. 

Trying to squeak past the Dodgers in the NLDS will be a gargantuan task, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. On Sunday, the Padres proved themselves capable and proved the doubters wrong. Even after New York’s letdown last weekend against Atlanta, the Padres entered the Wild-Card Series as significant underdogs. 

They exit as the victors.

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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