Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, playing long game, lets one get away against Reds
Alejandro Carrillo of the Mets reacts on the mound after surrendering a sixth-inning two-run home run against Tyler Stephenson of the Cincinnati Reds at Citi Field on Friday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
There was some semblance of logic to Carlos Mendoza’s bullpen management in the Mets’ ugly 8-4 loss to the Reds on Friday night, though probably not the kind of logic you’d want to hear.
Sean Manaea, on a pitch count as he continues to work around the loose bodies in his elbow, was effective but not particularly efficient, and by the time his night was done, Mendoza had five more innings to eat.
Should be easy enough, what with a fully rested bullpen coming off the All-Star break, right?
Well, not completely.
Saturday’s starter, Clay Holmes, already has exceeded his career high in innings, and there’s no doubt the Mets want to keep an eye on him. Monday’s starter, Kodai Senga, also working his way back from injury, will be on a pitch count, too.
So sure, Mendoza was being cautious, particularly after a June from hell in which the Mets burned through their bullpen like a pyromaniac with a stack of grease-covered newspapers.
But there’s caution and then there’s punting. And by the time the ninth inning rolled around, the choice to stick with Alex Carrillo and Brandon Waddell for the duration of the game proved that it ain’t over ’til you play like it’s over.
Because while Carrillo entered with a 2-1 lead and departed with a 6-2 deficit, it turned out that the Mets’ offense sparked to life in the ninth. They scored two runs in that frame, loaded the bases and had the tying run at the plate when the game ended.
Summoning the hard-throwing Carrillo wasn’t necessarily the problem. Despite a few mistakes, the righty’s stuff has looked relatively good in his two major-league appearances. The issue was that Mendoza left him in for approximately one inning too long.
Carrillo was making his first appearance at Citi Field and the jitters were noticeable. (“I was trying to do a little too much,” the 29-year-old rookie said.) And though he did well enough while collecting the first two outs in the fifth, his velocity, which generally hovers around triple digits, was down — a likely result, he said, of the layoff.
Then he hit TJ Friedl with a pitch and grooved a fastball that Matt McLain crushed, blasting it 382 feet to left-center to give the Reds a 3-2 lead.
Carrillo struck out Elly De La Cruz to end the inning but completely lost the plot in the sixth. It took a leadoff homer, a walk, a wild pitch, another homer, and yet another walk before Mendoza pulled the plug with one out in the inning.
“I needed to cover five innings there and we’re giving these guys a look here,” Mendoza said. “Carrillo didn’t have it today.”
By that point, the Mets were trailing by four, and Mendoza again veered out of the circle of trust and into the trapezoid of “gee, I hope this works.”
And so entered Waddell, who up until this season had been out of major-league baseball since 2021. He has proved to be a serviceable long man, but like Carrillo, he didn’t have it Friday. He got the last two outs of the sixth but waded into trouble in the seventh.
Also like Carrillo, he was made to wear it. He allowed a run in the seventh and another in the eighth and stayed in for the remainder of the game despite struggling with his control. His final line: 3 2⁄3 innings, two runs, four hits, three walks, two strikeouts and a hit by pitch (someone send an apology edible arrangement to Friedl, who tied a major-league record by being hit three times in one game).
“At that point, once we got down three, four [runs], Waddell is kind of like our long man there,” Mendoza said. “I’m not going to deploy our high-leverage guys when you’re chasing three, four, five runs. With Carrillo, the game was still down one after the fifth inning. I needed to get a couple out of them and it just didn’t happen.”
It was managing for the future. And let’s be clear, sometimes that works. The Mets saw it firsthand last year when they and the rest of the baseball world repeatedly watched Dodgers manager Dave Roberts work around an injury-ravaged pitching staff by essentially ceding games, even in the playoffs.
But it’s a dangerous gambit, and cliches are more often true for a reason: In the end, every game counts the same. It ain’t over ’til it’s over. Take it one game at a time.
“We’ll continue to give opportunities to some of these guys,” Mendoza said. “We know the main guys that have been here the whole year, and we’ll continue to evaluate the situation as we’re trying to win baseball games, obviously.”
On Friday, that last part was a little less obvious.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
