My excellent fastball, Scherzer struggled against the Padres

THE NEW YORK As the first round of jeers rained down on Citi Field, Max Scherzer adjusted his cap while muttering to himself on the mound. Before Manny Machado reached first base, Mets manager Buck Showalter had already made it halfway between the dugout and the foul line on his way to pull Scherzer from one of his most perplexing outings to date.

When Citi Field was enemy territory, Scherzer routinely encountered the angry greeting he experienced when he threw the ball to Showalter and quickly gazed up at the sky.

Without pausing, Scherzer made his way down the length of the dugout and straight into the tunnel leading to the clubhouse. For the first time in his 27 career playoff outings, he had just given up four home runs and seven earned runs. Despite having won 101 games during the regular season, his performance had dropped the Mets to a 7-1 loss to the Padres in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series on Friday, putting them in danger of being eliminated.

Baseball can bring about both the highest and lowest of highs, according to Scherzer. “This is one of the very lowest lows,”

The Mets will now depend on Jacob deGrom, their second ace, to end the season in Game 2 on Saturday.

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The chances are not on their side. With the exception of eight three-game Wild Card matchups during the enlarged 2020 playoffs, MLB has little history with three-game playoff series. Six of the eight teams who won the first game in those series went on to win in two games. But the two teams that levelled the series in Game 2 both triumphed in Game 3.

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The Mets will need a better start from deGrom than they got from Scherzer for them to join the latter group. Scherzer gave up a two-run home run to Josh Bell in the first inning, a solo shot to Trent Grisham in the second, a three-run game-tying shot to Jurickson Machado’s night was terminated by Profar’s lone homer in the fifth. A future Hall of Famer was jeered off his home field, evoking memories of Tom Glavine’s performance against the Marlins in the final game of the regular season in 2007.

Bob Melvin, the manager of the Padres, stated, “This is not a game that you generally see out of Max. “Therefore, we were lucky.”

Following that, the obvious line of inquiry focused on whether Scherzer, who missed two games this summer due to a left oblique problem, was physically impaired in any way. Showalter described this inquiry as “typical because you’ve got a guy that throws most of the time so brilliantly.” Even the manager recognised Showalter’s intention to look for signs of injury, though he didn’t necessarily expect to.

For his part, Scherzer insisted on being healthy, just as he had done before his debut. Instead of concentrating on his oblique, Scherzer attributed his problems on his fastball’s lack of ride, which he found difficult to explain.

Scherzer remarked, “I don’t know why I didn’t have my strong fastball.  So, sure, I’m going to have a late night.

Scherzer’s brilliance concealed other concerning patterns for the Mets, chief among them an offence that went 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position and failed to pose a threat to Padres starter Yu Darvish aside from Eduardo Escobar’s single home run in the fifth inning. Numerous times throughout the game, the 41,621 fans jammed into Citi Field voiced their anger, creating enough noise for Darvish to remark, “It felt like literally someone was shouting into my ears.” However, it was simpler for them to target Scherzer when the game was most crucial.