Mets’ walk-off thriller helped their own case in playoff hunt filled with ‘watching’
NY Post
The scoreboard high above left field taunted them all night. It teased a dugout full of baseball players whose bats scratched out only one run over most of two days. It sneered at Sean Manaea, brilliant once again across seven innings, but on the hook for a loss when it was 1-0 for so long.
“I was watching,” Manaea admitted of the scoreboard. “I definitely was.”
The Dodgers were up in Atlanta, 1-0. They were up 2-0, then 3-0, then 5-0. We’re inside of two weeks left in the season, and the Dodgers were trying to lend the Mets a hand. That’s part of a playoff chase, sure: sometimes you have to rely on the kindness of strangers. But eventually you have to help yourself, too.
Inning after inning, the Mets couldn’t help themselves.
Inning after inning, a Washington Nationals right-hander named Jake Irvin plowed his way through the Mets lineup, same as he had on the Fourth of July, when he’d thrown eight goose eggs at them and won 1-0 when the man playing right field for the Mets now, Jesse Winker, hit a homer off long-departed pitcher Adrian Houser.
“We didn’t hit too many hard balls against him,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, and there were 21,694 people in the stands who could back that up as they groaned uneasily; the scoreboard was goading them, too, most of all. The Mets had an opportunity. They just needed to buy a run, and then another.
With the Yankees on an impressive run of mostly correct decisions, there’s some reason to leave them alone and just let the best team in the American League continue to roll. But they did raise serious doubt and leave room for suggestions (and even ridicule) following maybe the most inexplicable decision of this season, or any season.
The Giants have never been 0-2 under Brian Daboll, until now. They were 2-0 and flying high in 2022 and 1-1 after a rousing comeback in Arizona in 2023. So, this represents a low point as far as early-season difficulties for Daboll and the Giants. They had no business beating the Vikings in the opener and no business losing to the Commanders in Week 2. But here they are.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Harrison Butker kept making a lonely walk to midfield after each quarter Sunday to check on the direction of the wind, which tends to swirl inside Arrowhead Stadium. He did it one last time during the 2-minute warning, when his Chiefs were trailing the Bengals by two and trying to give him a winning field-goal attempt.