Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen watched the first game of the Mets-Braves doubleheader from home on Monday.
It was an all-timer with three lead changes — all in the eighth or ninth innings — in front of a rowdy crowd at Truist Park in Atlanta.
Gallen knew that Game 2 was really the one that mattered, though. A two-game sweep by either the Mets or Braves would send Arizona to a second consecutive postseason appearance for the first time since 2001-02. A split would send the D-backs home despite an 89-win season.
After seeing the Mets take Game 1, Gallen drove his English bulldog, Moose, to a trusted caretaker. If the Mets won again in Game 2, Gallen knew that he would not be returning home later that day. Instead, he would board a plane to Milwaukee and start Game 1 of the Wild Card Series against the Brewers the following day. He wanted Moose to be in good hands.
Gallen then drove to Chase Field to learn his team’s fate alongside his teammates. For a few hours, it was a room full of Mets fans.
“We were on edge,” Gallen said, “just kind of hoping that we got a little lucky.
“There were jokes going around. Someone gets a big hit or a guy turns in a big performance, send them the best bottle of tequila or bourbon I can find.”
With the Braves up 1-0 in the later innings, Gallen headed to the field to play catch. The Mets were a bloop and a blast away from sending the D-backs to the playoffs. About 50 feet above Gallen, the Mets-Braves ESPN2 broadcast played on the center field video board, with audio blaring through the stadium speakers.
In the bottom of the seventh, Braves slugger Marcell Ozuna turned a 1-0 Braves lead into a 3-0 lead with a two-run single.
Before long, the Braves won the game and secured their own ticket to the postseason. Nearly 2,000 miles away, the Diamondbacks started packing their lockers.
“I put on my lucky shirt, put on my lucky socks, my lucky shorts,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “I think everybody in the Valley did that. I think we had a room full of people that went and did the same thing today. Just didn’t happen. And it stinks. It really stinks. It really hurts. It cuts deep.”
For the Diamondbacks, the doubleheader was somewhat rigged against them. Since both teams only needed one win to make the postseason, the winner of Game 1 had nothing but pride to play for in Game 2.
The Mets left their two best hitters, Francisco Lindor and Mark Vientos, out of their Game 2 lineup. They called up left-hander Joey Lucchesi, who had pitched in the majors once all year, to start.
Anything can happen in baseball, but Mets hitters did not look locked in. Mets manager Carlos Mendoza was never going to use any of his more important pitchers.
The Diamondbacks could not blame him.
“Any team in that position is going to do the same thing, right?” Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly said. “They’re looking forward to tomorrow. They know they’re in. They know they’re not going to play their main guys, and they know they’re not going to try to get hurt.
“They’ll probably tell you that their effort was there. But if they can’t look in the mirror and say that they weren’t trying as hard as they possibly could today, I think they’d be lying. And I think that’s natural, right? I think any team in that position would do the same thing. It’s just unfortunate that’s the game that our fate is decided.”
For the Diamondbacks, it did not have to be this way. As recently as Friday, they controlled their destiny in the NL wild card race. Had they swept the San Diego Padres in the final series of the year, they would have made the playoffs regardless of Monday’s doubleheader.
Instead, the Diamondbacks lost two of three to San Diego, including a backbreaker on Saturday against a Triple-A starting pitcher. Earlier in the week, they dropped two of three to a mediocre Giants team. Before that, they lost a game to the Brewers in which they had an 8-0 lead.
Had the Diamondbacks flipped even one of those games in their favor, the plane that awaited them on the tarmac at Sky Harbor Airport on Monday would have taken off.
“For any baseball team, for any baseball season,” outfielder Corbin Carroll said, “you can look back, and there’s so many games that could go in your favor and push that win total to one more and you’re right in the dance.
“That’s not maybe the most helpful or healthy way to look at it, but that’s real and that’s there. I think just the bigger picture and bigger job is taking this year and learning from it and being able to come out next year and get the job done; have our fate in her own hands.”
For Gallen, “disappointment” is the word that comes to mind.
“It’s hard to kind of dwell on the past because what happened happened,” Gallen said. “But when I was growing up, I had a coach when I was younger [who said], ‘Great players are even better self-evaluators.’
“You’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and understand places where you succeeded and looked good and might have helped the team, and places you might have failed, and be able to address those and try to curtail those for happening following seasons to come.”
On Aug. 25, the Diamondbacks were 75-56. They owned the top NL wild card spot. They had a seven-game lead over the fourth-place Mets, who were the biggest threat to take their playoff spot at the time. According to one projection system, the Diamondbacks had a 96.8 percent chance to make the playoffs at the time.
But as their wild-card competitors surged, the Diamondbacks finished the year 14-17. Entering the final week, they were still in position to make the playoffs. They lost five of their last seven, falling one win short.
The Diamondbacks are responsible for their poor finish. It will go down as the worst collapse in franchise history.
Nonetheless, they caught a bad break in having their season decided by a game in which one team was motivated and the other was not. Such games are hardly uncommon at the end of the season, but these Mets-Braves games were never going to be that way.
Had the games not been postponed by Hurricane Helene, the Mets would have tried to win both. Maybe the Diamondbacks’ fate would have been different. Maybe it wouldn’t.
Now, the Diamondbacks will have a long offseason to ponder how a season that once looked very promising slipped away. They will think about what they could have done differently. They will think about how to avoid a similar outcome next season.
“We gotta look ourselves in the mirror and understand that we probably could do some things a little bit better,” Gallen said, “might put us in a position to do something like we did last year.
“We have a good group in here. We have guys that I know have the urge to want to be better and finish this thing. I have no doubts there.”
Top photo: Rob Schumacher/The Republic
