New York Mets manager Buck Showalter defended his decision to have San Diego Padres' pitcher Joe Musgrove checked for a foreign substance in their 6-0 shutout Wild Card series loss on Sunday.
The Mets bowed out of the preseason after their excellent 101-61 regular season, unable to find any answers to Musgrove, who allowed only one hit across seven innings with five strikeouts.
Musgrove became the first pitcher to go seven scoreless innings and allow one or zero hits in a winner-take-all game as the Padres advanced to the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Showalter desperately, and unsuccessfully, tried to get Musgrove pulled out of the game in the sixth inning when he requested umpires check him for a foreign substance, including inspecting his ears.
"I felt like that was best for us right now. Some pretty obvious reasons why it was necessary," Showalter told reporters.
"I love him as a pitcher, always have. He's too good a pitcher… Without getting into a lot of things, the spin rates and other things [were unusual], I get a lot of information in the dugout. We certainly weren't having much luck the way it was going, that's for sure.
"I'm charged with doing what’s best for the New York Mets. However it might make me look, I’m going to do that every time and live with the consequences.
"I'm not here to not hurt somebody's feelings."
Padres manager Bob Melvin was quick to defend Musgrove's character, with the right-hander jeered at times after the incident.
"Questioning his character to me is the part I have a problem with," Melvin said. "I'm here to tell everybody that Joe Musgrove is above board as any pitcher I know and any player I know and unfortunately that happened to him. The reception he got after that was not warranted."
Musgrove understood Showalter's request, claiming that the Mets were getting "desperate". The pitcher gestured at the crowd and the Mets dugout after the sixth inning.
"I figured he was going to do it," he said. "I've seen him do it before, checking the pitcher.
"I get it, they're on their last leg. They're desperate. They're doing everything they can to get me out of the game at that point. It motivated me a bit. It fired me up."
The win means the Padres are into the NLDS for the second time in the last three seasons, while it ends the Mets' season prematurely having seemed destined to be top seed in the NL East for long periods of the season before being overhauled late by the Atlanta Braves, including a series sweep.
"The sport is so gratifying and so many great things happen," Showalter said. "It's just cruel at times like this because I feel for the players, they put so much into it.
"We're such a special group. It's like I just told them, it's not always fair. I don’t think I've ever had such a good blend of good people and good players."
Dodgers erase 5-run deficit, beat Yankees to win World Series
The Los Angeles Dodgers won their second World Series championship in five seasons, overcoming a five-run deficit with the help of three Yankees defensive miscues and rallying on sacrifice flies from Gavin Lux and Mookie Betts in the eighth inning to beat New York 7-6 in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit back-to-back home runs in the first inning, Alex Verdugo’s RBI single chased Jack Flaherty in the second and Giancarlo Stanton’s third-inning homer against Ryan Brasier built a 5-0 Yankees lead.
But errors by Judge in center and Anthony Volpe at shortstop, combined with pitcher Gerrit Cole failing to cover first on Betts' grounder, helped Los Angeles score five unearned runs in the fifth.
After Stanton’s sixth-inning sacrifice fly put the Yankees back ahead 6-5, the Dodgers loaded the bases against loser Tommy Kahnle in the eighth before the sacrifice flies off Luke Weaver.
Winner Blake Treinen escaped a two-on, one-out jam in the bottom half by retiring Stanton on a flyout and striking out Anthony Rizzo.
Walker Buehler, making his first relief appearance since his rookie season in 2018, pitched a perfect ninth for the save.
Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ record-setting $700 million signing and baseball’s first 50-homer, 50-steal player, went 2 for 19 with no RBIs and had one single after separating his shoulder during a stolen base attempt in Game 2.
Freddie Freeman hit a two-run single to tie the Series record of 12 RBIs, set by Bobby Richardson over seven games in 1960. With the Dodgers one out from losing Friday’s opener, Freeman hit a game-ending grand slam reminiscent of Kirk Gibson’s homer off Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley in 1988’s Game 1 that sparked Los Angeles to the title.
The Dodgers earned their eighth championship and seventh since leaving Brooklyn for Los Angeles - their first in a non-shortened season since 1988. They won a neutral-site World Series against Tampa Bay in 2020 after a 60-game regular season and couldn’t have a parade because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Volpe hits grand slam as Yankees avoid World Series sweep
Anthony Volpe hit a grand slam and New York’s bullpen tossed five scoreless innings as the Yankees avoided a World Series sweep with an 11-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday night.
Freddie Freeman homered for his sixth straight Series game, hitting a two-run drive in the first inning for the second straight night and again stunning the Yankee Stadium crowd.
Game 5 is Wednesday night, with the Yankees ace Gerrit Cole and the Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty meeting in a rematch of Game 1.
Twenty-one of the previous 24 teams to take 3-0 Series leads went on to sweeps, all but the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics against the Chicago Cubs, the 1937 Yankees against the New York Giants and the 1970 Baltimore Orioles against the Cincinnati Reds. All three of those Series ended in five games.
Seeking to become the first team to overcome a 3-0 Series deficit, New York surged ahead 5-2 on Alex Verdugo’s RBI grounder in the second and Volpe’s drive against Daniel Hudson in the third. Volpe turned on a first-pitch slider at the knees and drove it into the left-field seats.
Volpe came across with New York's first run when he walked after falling behind 0-2 in the count in the second inning. He also doubled and stole two bases.
Austin Wells and Gleyber Torres added homers for the Yankees, who broke open the game with a five-run eighth. New York had scored just seven runs in the first three games.
Los Angeles closed within 6-4 in a two-run fifth that included Will Smith's homer off starter Luis Gil and an RBI grounder by Freeman. Despite a sprained right ankle, Freeman beat a relay to avoid an inning-ending double play on what originally was ruled an out but was reversed in a video review.
Wells hit a second-deck homer in the sixth against Landon Knack, and Verdugo added another run-scoring grounder in the eighth ahead of Torres' three-run homer off Brent Honeywell.
Tim Hill, winning pitcher Clay Holmes, Mark Leiter Jr., Luke Weaver and Tim Mayza strung together five innings of one-hit relief with seven strikeouts, and the Yankees avoided what would have been their first losing Series sweep since 1976.
New York's Aaron Judge drove in his first run of the Series with an RBI single in the eighth and is 2 for 15 in the four games. Dodgers sensation Shohei Ohtani also is 2 for 15 after going 1 for 4 with a single, his first hit since partially separating his left shoulder in Game 2.
Dodgers go up 3-0 on Yankees in World Series
A record-tying feat by Freddie Freeman and a sharp pitching performance from Walker Buehler has the Los Angeles Dodgers one win away from a World Series sweep.
Freeman had a two-run homer in the first inning and Buehler threw five scoreless innings as the National League Champions took a 3-0 series lead on the New York Yankees with Monday's 4-2 victory.
The Dodgers can wrap up their second World Series title in five years and eighth in franchise history in Tuesday's Game 4 at Yankee Stadium. Only one team in MLB history has won a best-of-seven post-season series after losing the first three games - the Boston Red Sox against the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series.
Shohei Ohtani, in the lineup despite injuring his left shoulder in Los Angeles' Game 2 win on Saturday, went 0 for 3 but did draw a walk off New York starter Clarke Schmidt to begin Monday's contest.
Two batters later, Freeman drilled Schmidt's pitch into the right-field seats to stake the Dodgers to a 2-0 lead. The first baseman has now homered in five consecutive World Series games, tying a record set by the Houston Astros' George Springer during the 2017 and 2019 editions.
Freeman also joined Hank Bauer (1958) and Barry Bonds (2002) as the only players to homer in each of the first three games of a single World Series. The All-Star slugger also went deep in Games 5 and 6 of the 2021 Fall Classic while then with the Atlanta Braves.
Buehler did not allow a hit until Giancarlo Stanton's double with one out in the fourth inning and yielded just two overall before departing with a 3-0 advantage.
The Dodgers got another run courtesy of a lead-off walk in the third inning. Tommy Edman drew the free pass from Schmidt before moving to second on Ohtani's groundout and crossing the plate on Mookie Betts' bloop single to right field.
Schmidt lasted just 2 2/3 innings and issued four walks while permitting three runs.
Los Angeles extended the margin to 4-0 in the sixth. Gavin Lux was hit by a pitch from New York reliever Jake Cousins and stole second before being brought home by Enrique Hernandez's single.
The Yankees did not get on the board until former Dodger Alex Verdugo's two-run homer off Michael Kopech in the ninth inning.
New York missed out on a chance to score following Stanton's double in the fourth, however, as the slugger was later thrown out at the plate by Dodgers left fielder Teoscar Hernandez on single off the bat of Anthony Volpe.
The Dodgers are expected to throw a bullpen game in Game 4, while the Yankees will send out 15-game winner Luis GIl in an attempt to extend the series.
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