Friends, Romans, countrymen ... lend me your ears. The Padres came to bury the Mets, not praise them.
Oh, and you won't find anything on Joe Musgrove's ears except a whole lot of champagne and beer after the San Diego native dominated New York in a 6-0 win, ending the Mets season and sending the Padres to the National League Division Series against the Dodgers (starting in L.A. on Tuesday).
Musgrove retired the first 12 hitters he faced and only allowed one hit through 5.0 innings. So, in the 6th, NY manager Buck Showalter asked the umpiring crew to check Joe for a foreign substance. The officials rubbed up Joe's ears, his hat, his hands, his gloves, and ruled there was nothing underhanded happening.
The guy is just a really good pitcher, and on a night when he had a chance to extend his home town team's season ... and bring playoff baseball back to his home town ... the big righty was phenomenal.
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Joe went 7.0 shutout innings with five strikeouts, one walk and one hit allowed and he did it on 86 pitches. He had plenty of help from his friends, too.
Wil Myers made a pair of solid plays at 1st base, including a barehanded grab and flip to Musgrove when a bouncer hit the top of the bag and took a wacky hop. In the 5th inning Trent Grisham made a fabulous running catch at the base of the right-centerfield wall and nearly doubled off a runner at 1st base.
Speaking of Grisham, he continued to look like a left-handed Mike Trout in the postseason. He had another RBI single and was part of one heck of a potent bottom third of the San Diego lineup. His single scored Ha-Seong Kim, who had walked and stolen 2nd base with two outs in the 4th inning (Kim walked thrice and scored all three times). That made it 3-0. The first two runs were brought home by the last hitter in the order.
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In the 2nd inning, catcher Austin Nola stepped in with the bases loaded and two outs against Mets starter Chris Bassitt. The count quickly went to 0-2 and Nola fouled off some tough pitches before hanging in on a curve ball and singling through the left side to bring home a pair of runs and give Musgrove the slim margin he needed.
Manny Machado brought home run #4 in the 5th inning with an opposite field single to score Jurickson Profar. In the top of the 8th they put it away with Juan Soto laced a 2-run single off New York closer Edwin Diaz to make it 6-0 and you could hear the champagne chilling.
San Diego takes down a 101-win team in the Wild Card round. To advance again they'll have to beat a team they have had basically zero success against for about a decade, the 111-win Dodgers. Games 1 and 2 will be at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday and Wednesday, then Game 3 heads to Petco Park on Friday, where fans will be able to see postseason baseball in person for the first time since 2006.
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