Since I have been most vocal, let me clarify, getting hit is one thing, anyone can get hit, especially in the playoffs, which is “best on best” and a different pressure and focus for everyone. Clase faced 6 hitters and threw 7 balls. I didn’t see the game but that ratio suggests he went after hitters, which is what you expect, at what least I expect. You are facing the best teams, best lineups, you make them earn what they get, not help them out.
Contrast that with Diaz Sunday, who faced 5 batters, went to 3-2 on 3 of them and walked Harper on 4 pitches, none of them even close. In all he threw 13 balls to the 5 and finally got bit by pitching into so many hitters counts when Stott tripled on a 3-2 pitch.
Now Megill, who as I say, I don’t really hold accountable, putting him into the situation he was put in, with no prior experience at all, was inexcusable IMO. He pitched well, until it became time to close the inning out in the 9th, a situation completely foreign to him. Anyway, brought in into the 8th with the Mets down 2, he went right after Marsh and Bohm and retired both, throwing one ball. However, when kept in the game in the 9th after the Mets tied it up, a completely different story. He got the first two outs very cleanly but then it comes to true crunch time, staring the finish line in the face, if you will. He walks both Turner and Harper, setting up Castellanos winner. IMO, to use a pool phrase I have used here before, Mendoza IMO, especially with the Phillies turning the lineup over, was “poking and hoping” with Megill in the 9th and it bit him and the Mets.
So my complaint wasn’t that Diaz gave up runs at all, it was his pitching approach, not attacking the hitters. As I said, to me Megill pitched well but thrust into a position he had no experience in, I thought it a terrible decision by Mendoza. That doesn’t make me right, but that is definitely the way I see it.
