LOS ANGELES — Perhaps it is disrespectful to Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Jack Flaherty to wonder whether the New York Mets were simply out of rhythm Sunday night — whether their first break in two frenetic weeks disrupted their hitherto unbeatable flow. He did, after all, hold them scoreless for seven dominant innings in which he allowed just two hits. No Dodgers starting pitcher this month has pitched better.
If rust was not an issue, the recently electric Mets could have bigger ones to worry about after being shocked in a 9-0 loss in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. They played seven postseason games before Sunday. They had not scored fewer than three runs in any of them.
“That energy and that drive and that momentum, we feel like we can continue to sustain it,” Mets outfielder Starling Marte said through an interpreter. “It’s a game that we dropped. This is going to be a long series.”
The Mets, as the lone wild-card team remaining in the postseason, are by some measures underdogs. But most Cinderellas don’t carry Louis Vuitton: The Mets, despite downsizing before the season, still have the largest payroll in baseball. The Dodgers, despite splurging in the offseason, remain second.
Still, money cannot buy momentum, and it certainly did not when the Mets missed the postseason a year ago. This year’s group of Mets generated theirs over the final four months of a regular season that began badly and ended in ascent.
But this week — for the first time since they charged into the playoffs, barreled through the Milwaukee Brewers in the first round and survived an emotional NLDS with the Philadelphia Phillies — the Mets had time to breathe. Their division series ended Wednesday, giving them three days to rest. And nothing threatens good baseball vibes more than having time to think — except, perhaps, a starter as dominant as Flaherty.
“I don’t think [the break interrupted the momentum],” Mets designated hitter Jesse Winker said. “I just think we ran into a really good pitcher who pitched well.”
Flaherty, who grew up in Sherman Oaks and played at nearby Harvard-Westlake, worked seven sparkling innings in which he was barely threatened. The 28-year-old righty did not allow a hit until the fifth inning. He struck out six. No Mets hitter reached third. The Dodgers pitching staff has not allowed a runner to reach third since the seventh inning of Game 4 of the NLDS.
The Mets would have broken that streak if Winker had not made what he called “a really bad play” after singling in the fifth — the kind of momentary lapse that would be understandable after a few days out of high-stakes competition.
Winker was the first Met to break through against Flaherty, at a time when his teammates were starting to square his pitches up. When Jose Iglesias singled, Winker tried to go first-to-third, then stopped a few yards from third base when center fielder Kike Hernández threw behind him to second. Winker danced off third, as if frozen in place, where a quick throw left him tagged out.
“Obviously a baserunning play takes the wind out of a potential rally,” Winker said. “That’s what hurts the most.”
But the Mets would have needed a lot more than that rally to climb back into the game, largely because New York starter Kodai Senga — who made his second start of the 2024 season and his first since July in Game 1 of the NLDS — struggled to throw a strike.
After retiring Shohei Ohtani in the first, Senga walked Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández, bouncing a few pitches well short of home plate in the process. With two outs, Max Muncy made him pay for the lack of control, providing a single that scored Betts and Freeman. Senga said later his mechanics felt off in the bullpen before the game, and that he battled them throughout his outing.
“He was off. He didn’t have it,” Mets Manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He didn’t have the life on his fastball and a lot of balls out of hand, noncompetitive pitches, especially the split.”
In fairness to Senga, he ran into a lineup that was eager to pounce.
Muncy and Manager Dave Roberts separately told reporters Sunday that the Dodgers learned a lesson from the last time they made it to the NLCS in 2021. After surviving an emotional series with the San Francisco Giants only to fall flat against the Atlanta Braves. Muncy and Roberts said the Dodgers realized in hindsight that they relaxed too much after surviving one series to step on the gas in the next. They did not want to make that mistake again.
If urgency can be measured in runs, they didn’t. Senga helped by walking four batters while getting just four outs and departed after Ohtani singled through the right side to make it 3-0 in the second inning. Ohtani was a relative nonfactor in the last few games of the NLDS. That the Dodgers won largely without him — or at least with only the threat of his bat instead of its full impact — was an unacknowledged miracle.
He finished Sunday with two hits and two runs scored in the rout. But he is 16 for his last 19 with runners in scoring position, so when he came to bat with two men on in the seventh, the Mets pitched around him. Mookie Betts hit a bases-clearing double to run the Dodgers’ lead to nine.
“I just thought tonight we kind of checked down and got some big base hits, whether moving a guy over, moving him up, and then getting a knock,” Roberts said. “I just thought all night long we were really stubborn.”
Flaherty, too, was unwavering. He mixed his pitches, spotting his mid-90s fastball when he needed to, and saved the heart of the Dodgers bullpen so successfully that Roberts said his team will use a bullpen game in Game 2 on Monday afternoon.
“It was just a pitching clinic,” Roberts said. “… And for us to get seven innings in a long series was huge.”
The last time the Dodgers pitched a bullpen game was Game 4 of the NLDS, when eight different relievers shut out the Padres. The last time the Dodgers gave up a run was the third inning of Game 3 of the NLDS, 33 innings ago — tying the 1966 Baltimore Orioles’ record for consecutive scoreless postseason innings. Maybe the Mets were a little rusty Sunday night. Maybe they never had much chance.
