PHILADELPHIA — It worked out. When it works out, you don’t have to wear body armor to the postgame news gathering. When it works out, you don’t have to worry about angry Mets fans storming the Turnpike with pitchforks and blow torches. When it works out you get to exhale and explain yourself with a grin and not a grimace.
“We got away with stuff tonight,” Mickey Callaway said with a thin smile after the Mets somehow claimed a 7-6 victory in 11 innings over the Phillies on Monday night at Citizens Bank Park. “But we still came up with a win. That says a lot.”
Mostly what it says is that as generous as the Mets wanted to be all across this 4-hour, 29-minute slog of a game, the Phillies couldn’t be convinced to accept the charity.
“They kept trying to give us the bleepin’ game,” Larry Bowa, the ex-Phillies manager and current senior team adviser, said in the press elevator when it was finally over, looking like he’d just eaten a bad batch of crab fries.
There were two primary donors: the first was Noah Syndergaard, who kept throwing lollipops ahead in the count and so he surrendered a 3-0 lead and a 5-3 lead during a forgettable night’s work. Still, he was in line to pick up his second win of the year after Brando Nimmo homered in the sixth to give the Mets a 6-5 lead.
That’s when the second benefactor stepped forward. Mostly, that was Jeurys Familia, who brought his scary-movie stuff into the bottom of the eighth, allowed a single and three walks and somehow still hadn’t given up the lead when he surrendered the ball.
Still, while Familia left a mess behind — bases loaded, two outs — it seemed the Mets could escape because they have Edwin Diaz on their side. And surely Edwin Diaz, the cornerstone closer, the key offseason acquisition, would be trotting in from the bullpen for a four-out save. He hadn’t pitched since Thursday. If there can be a statement game on the 15th of April, this was it.
Robert Gsellman came in instead. He walked Jean Segura on four pitches. Tie game.
Again: It wound up working out. Gsellman got Bryce Harper to pop up with the bases loaded. He gave them the ninth, too. Luis Avilan tiptoed through the 10th. The Mets scored a run in the 11th because Michael Conforto hit a ball so hard Rhys Hoskins couldn’t handle it at first and Juan Lagares came storming home for the lead.
And then Diaz came in for a 1-2-3 save in the 11th, striking out the side on 11 pitches.
Callaway was pleasantly defiant postgame. He also made it plainly clear there is a guideline in place for his bullpen, and it will only be crossed … well, it’s hard to tell how it will ever be crossed if it wasn’t Monday night. But it goes something like this:
Diaz will get three outs, maximum, whenever he pitches.
That is non-negotiable.
“I think we’ve said this before,” Callaway said. “He’s not going to get four outs.”
He said it, but he didn’t have to say it. He telegraphed his intentions in the 16th game of the season, because if ever a situation screamed for Callaway to fudge the game plan a little, this was it. The Mets have been all about making statements early, splitting six games with Washington and four with Atlanta, sweeping Miami.
They didn’t need to win this game.
But they sure didn’t want to blow it. And they seemed desperate to blow it.
“We have faith in the other guys,” Callaway said, and he did so with a straight face, even after watching Familia sprinkle gasoline all over the eighth inning.
“Our bullpen threw seven innings and gave up one run,” he said, and that was accurate. It was also necessary to watch every pitch Familia, Gsellman and Avilan threw with a couple of nitroglycerin pills at the ready.
“When we get to the playoffs he’ll be available,” Callaway said, but if the playoffs happen that’s 146 games from now, and that’s a lot of eighth-inning outs between now and then, and the Mets have all but formally announced that no team will have to worry about Diaz in the eighth inning, ever, so plan your late-inning thunder accordingly.
“We may lose a game or two because of that,” Callaway said.
They didn’t lose this one. This one worked out. To the victor go the spoils. And a Big Gulp-sized helping of Maalox at no extra cost.
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