Dodgers history-making pitching rust beats Mets

If rust isn't an issue, the Electric Mets might be thinking bigger recently after being stunned by a 9-0 loss in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. They had played seven postseason games before Sunday. None of them scored less than three runs.

“That energy and that drive and that speed, we feel like we can keep it up,” Mets outfielder Starling Marte said through an interpreter. “It's a game we've dropped. It's going to be a long series.”

The Mets, as the only wild-card team remaining in the postseason, are underdogs by some measures. But most Cinderellas don't carry Louis Vuitton: The Mets, despite downsizing before the season, still have the biggest payroll in baseball. The Dodgers, despite splurging in the offseason, finished second.

Still, money can't buy momentum, and it certainly didn't when the Mets missed the postseason a year ago. This year's group of Mets made it through the final four months of a regular season that started poorly and ended up climbing.

But this week — since making the playoffs for the first time, barreling through the Milwaukee Brewers in the first round and surviving an emotional NLDS with the Philadelphia Phillies — the Mets had time to breathe. Their division series ended on Wednesday, giving them three days of rest. And nothing threatens a good baseball vibe more than having time to think — except, perhaps, a starter as dominant as Flaherty.

“I don't think so [the break interrupted the momentum]Mets designated hitter Jesse Winker said. “I just think we went to a really good pitcher who pitched well.”

Flaherty, who grew up in Sherman Oaks and played at nearby Harvard-Westlake, pitched seven sparkling innings in which he was barely threatened. The 28-year-old righty didn't allow a hit until the fifth inning. He hit a six. No Mets hitter has reached third. The Dodgers pitching staff has not allowed a runner to reach third since the seventh inning of Game 4 of the NLDS.

The Mets would have snapped that streak had Winker not had what he called a “really bad game” after he singled in the fifth — the kind of fleeting lapse that would make sense days after a high-stakes contest.

Winker was the first Met against Flaherty, as his teammates began to square up his pitches. When Jose Iglesias singled, Winker tried to go from first to third, then stopped a few yards short of third base when Hernandez threw the center fielder's kick behind him to second. Winker danced to third, seemingly frozen in place, where a quick throw tagged him out.

“Obviously a base-running play takes the wind out of a potential rally,” Winker said. “That's what hurts the most.”

But the Mets needed more than that rally to get back into the game, largely because New York starter Kodai Senga — making his second start of the 2024 season and his first since July in Game 1 of the NLDS — struggled to throw a strike.

After retiring Shohei Ohtani in the first, Senga walked Mookie Bates, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez, bouncing several pitches off home plate in the process. With two outs, Max Muncy made him pay for his lack of control, delivering a single that scored Bates and Freeman. Senga later said his mechanics were felt in the bullpen before the game and he struggled with them during his outings.

“He was off. He just didn't have it,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He had no life on his fastball and a lot of balls out of hand, uncontested pitches, especially splits.”

In fairness to Senga, he ran into a lineup that was eager to pounce.

Muncie and manager Dave Roberts separately told reporters Sunday that the Dodgers learned a lesson from the last time they made it to the NLCS in 2021. After surviving an emotional series with the San Francisco Giants only to fall flat against the Atlanta Braves. Muncie and Roberts said the Dodgers instinctively realized they were too relaxed to step on the gas in the next after surviving one series. They didn't want to make that mistake again.

If urgency could be measured in runs, they didn't. Senga walked four batters with just four outs and left after Ohtani singled to right to make it 3-0 in the second inning. Ohtani has been a relative nonfactor in the last few games of the NLDS. That the Dodgers won so much without him — or with only the threat of his bat rather than his full impact — is an unacknowledged miracle.

He finished Sunday with two hits and two runs in the rout. But he's 16 of his last 19 with runners in scoring position, so when he came up with two batters in the seventh, the Mets rallied around him. Mookie Betts hit a bases-clearing double to cut the Dodgers' lead to nine.

“I just thought tonight we checked down and got some big base hits, got a guy in, got him up, and then got a knock,” Roberts said. “I just thought we were really stubborn all night.”

Flaherty was also adamant. He mixed up his pitches, flashed his mid-90s fastball when he needed to and saved the heart of the Dodgers bullpen so successfully that Roberts said his team will use a bullpen game in Game 2 on Monday afternoon.

“It was just a pitching clinic,” Roberts said. “… and getting seven innings in a long series was huge for us.”

The last time the Dodgers pitched a bullpen game was Game 4 of the NLDS, when eight different relievers shut down the Padres. The last time the Dodgers gave up a run was in the third inning of Game 3 of the NLDS, 33 innings ago – the 1966 Baltimore Orioles' postseason record for consecutive scoreless innings. Perhaps the Mets were a little rusty Sunday night. Maybe they didn't have much of a chance.