PHOENIX — The New York Mets had done the hard part.
Pressed into action by a brief start from Luis Severino, a quartet of New York relievers had taken a tie game in the fifth and handed a one-run lead to Edwin Díaz in the bottom of the eighth. There was a runner on first, two outs, and the bottom two hitters in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ order up.
It took Díaz a dozen pitches to light the game on fire.
He walked the first man on four pitches. He walked the second on a full count. And he hung an 0-1 slider that Corbin Carroll launched into right field for a game-winning grand slam.
Arizona 8, New York 5.
“It’s a tough loss,” Díaz said. “We had it.”
It was the second “worst loss of the season” the Mets have endured in the last four days, the second gut punch, the second time they managed to turn a potentially galvanizing victory into a deflating defeat.
The math is not kind to them in a National League wild-card race that grows tougher by the day. The Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves are all on pace for at least 89 wins. New York is four games behind Atlanta and on pace for 84.
“We’ve got an uphill battle, for sure,” Brandon Nimmo said. “In order for us to make our way in, one of those teams is going to have to falter a little bit, and we have to take advantage.”
Nimmo took a positive approach: The Mets were five outs away from taking three of four from the red-hot Padres in San Diego, and they were four outs away from taking the first two of this series against the equally hot Diamondbacks on the road.
“We’re still playing good baseball,” Nimmo said. “These are good teams we’re playing.”
But time is not on New York’s side. Its rough start to the season left it little margin for error. The Mets are exhausting it in the late innings this week.
Just as in Sunday’s brutal late loss in San Diego, New York was headed toward an energizing win Wednesday. After falling behind 4-0 early, the Mets rebounded with four runs in the fifth and a go-ahead tally in the sixth created by Starling Marte. Their bullpen, short-handed by the unavailability of Dedniel Núñez, pieced together three hitless innings to get the ball to Díaz.
(Núñez hasn’t recovered well from his first outing back off the injured list, and he’s day to day with lingering tightness in his right forearm. The Mets refused to make the reliever available for comment after the game.)
“You always feel good about your chances when you get your closer,” manager Carlos Mendoza said.
But Díaz was wild from the start. He missed with a first-pitch slider in and three fastballs up and away to pinch hitter Pavin Smith. He worked the count full to Geraldo Perdomo before losing him on a slider in.
That set up the encounter with Carroll. Arizona’s best hitter against New York’s closer with the bases loaded? That usually goes well for the Diamondbacks in this ballpark. Carroll unloaded on Díaz’s slider.
“My slider is floating in the zone,” Díaz said, referring also to the slider Jackson Merrill hit for Sunday’s walk-off in San Diego. “I was a little side to side today, and I’ve got to fix it.”
Luis Severino is checked on after being hit by a line drive in the third inning. (Joe Camporeale / USA Today)
Carroll had already inflicted plenty of damage on the night. It was his comebacker in the third inning that stung Severino on the right foot. After severely limping around the mound, Severino stayed in, but his velocity was briefly compromised, and Arizona capitalized for the straight hits, including Joc Pederson’s two-run moon shot to right.
Carroll added his first homer of the evening an inning later, a no-doubter to right-center.
Severino was still limping around the clubhouse after the game.
“A lot of pain, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “I’ll have a painful next three days, but it’s going to be good.”
The Mets have to showcase that same resilience in the face of present pain.
“It hurts,” Nimmo said of the loss. “Nothing we can do about it now, so we just move forward.”
(Top photo of Corbin Carroll rounding the bases after hitting a game-winning grand slam: Joe Camporeale / USA Today)
