MILWAUKEE — Against opposing right-handed hitter Colin Ray, the most logical decision would have been to put left-handed hitter Jesse Winker at designated hitter.
However, Carlos Mendoza chose restart over baseball rationality.
Hours before the game, the Mets manager included a prediction justifying the presence of J.D. Martinez in the order.
“We signed this guy in the offseason for a game like this,” Mendoza said of the right slugger. “He's done it before. He's had a lot of meaningful games and it's about time he had some big games.”
“Huge” might be an exaggeration, but at least there were some big games.
The Mets signed an afternoon designated hitter like they did on Sunday, and they won 5-0 against the Brewers at American Family Field, going 2-for-5 with a double and one run scored, giving the Mets just one win in Atlanta. I made sure that it would work. To play October baseball on Monday.
The Mets have lost three in a row and Martinez has gone a miserable 36 games without a hit, and the team hopes he finally wakes up before it's too late.
The 37-year-old hasn't had a hit in nearly three weeks, and his OPS has plummeted from .771 on September 9 to .721 entering the game.
At times he seemed lost, staring at his plate. Sometimes he became a victim of bad luck.
That luck changed in the series finale.
Martinez escaped the worst drought of his career in the fourth inning after flying to the warning line in the first inning.
Martinez hit a perfectly placed grounder down the third base line, but the grounder soared over the bases, over the head of third baseman Joey Ortiz, and a frantic Martinez slid safely into second base.
When he turned to the dugout for a celebratory airslap, nearly all of his teammates were having a blast.
“In the dugout, you could feel how the players were on the top step, right there, right behind him,” Mendoza said of the respected 14-year major leaguer. “He's a good hitter. He's an elite hitter. It's time for him to step up and he did that today.”
Martinez, who appeared in 54 at-bats in September with just three hits, hit a hard single to left field in the ninth inning, prompting Mendoza, a batter who told Mendoza this week that he believed he had found a breakthrough with his swing, to hit the ball in the ninth inning. showed new positive signs. .
Martinez kindly declined to discuss his slump and its possible end after his first multi-hit game since Aug. 30.
When his bat failed, his words always helped in the clubhouse.
“We can't put pressure on ourselves,” Martinez said ahead of a doubleheader in Atlanta that will decide the club's postseason fate. “I've been saying this ever since we were the worst and everyone looked down on us. It's like, 'Hey, there's no pressure on us.' We weren't supposed to be here. Now we can't get here and all of a sudden we're putting pressure on ourselves. ” ”
“I feel like this is the third or fourth time I'm saying this. This team is only going to play better when we do it.”
