Six Years Later, Buck Showalter Uses His Closer Non-Traditionally — And Extends The Mets’ Season

Careful listeners in Buck Showalter’s pregame press conference Saturday afternoon could deduce the most infamous decision of his career was still on the mind of the manager with the most photographic memory in baseball.

“We’re faced with situations in life, and if you do something a certain way, if it does work out you hold on to it,” Showalter said when asked how he might manager differently in an elimination game. “If it doesn’t work out, you have a way of shuffling the deck.”

Showalter played a different card Saturday night, when All-Star closer Edwin Diaz recorded the five biggest outs — in the seventh and eighth innings — for the Mets, who forced a decisive game three of an NL wild card series by outlasting the Padres, 7-3.

Diaz, who posted a 1.31 ERA and recorded 32 saves this season while striking out 118 batters and establishing himself as the favorite to win the NL’s Trevor Hoffman Award as the Senior Circuit’s best reliever, relieved Jacob deGrom to start the seventh inning with the Mets up 3-2.

“The whole idea when we brought him in was (Trent) Grisham has been hurting us,” Showalter said of the Padres’ eighth-place hitter, who homered in each of the first two games and led off the seventh by grounding out. “Take (Diaz) through certain parts that set up better for the rest of the bullpen. He was going to have to pitch somewhere. It depends where they fall in the order.”

Diaz jogged to the mound six years and four days after Showalter didn’t use Zack Britton in the Orioles’ AL wild card game against the Blue Jays. Britton, who won the 2016 AL Hoffman Award after finishing with a 0.47 ERA and 47 saves in as many chances, watched from the bullpen as the game remained tied until Ubaldo Jimenez served up the 11th-inning walk-off three-run homer to Edwin Encarnacion that gave the Blue Jays a 5-2 win and sent the Orioles down the path of one of the longest rebuilds in history.

Showalter was fired by the Orioles on Oct. 3, 2018 — one day shy of the two-year anniversary of the fateful wild card game — following a 47-115 nightmare that looked as if it might be the final act in a career defined by an ability to construct teams but not get them to the finish line.

But if these Mets — the fourth team Showalter has managed to the playoffs — were to fall short this year, they wouldn’t do so with their ace reliever in the bullpen for the game’s most pivotal outs.

After retiring Grisham, Diaz gave up a single to ninth-place hitter Austin Nola before getting Jurickson Profar and Juan Soto to ground out. The Mets batted around and scored four times in a 45-minute bottom half of the inning, but even with the 7-2 lead, Showalter never hesitated in sending Diaz back out to face the heart of the order.

The first-guessing of Showalter for sticking with Diaz arrived with the immediacy and ferocity he received for not pitching Britton six years and four days earlier. But Diaz, who threw in the cages during the bottom of the seventh, induced third-place hitter Manny Machado to ground out and walked Josh Bell before striking out Jake Cronenworth.

Showalter then pulled Diaz for Adam Ottavino, who recorded the last out of the eighth but got into trouble in the ninth with the exact portion of the order Diaz was entrusted to navigate. Ottavino plunked Grisham and walked Nola, Soto and Machado, the latter of which forced home Grisham with two outs.

Seth Lugo, who pitched Friday night and whom Showalter has tried avoiding using on back-to-back days, relieved Ottavino and notched the save by getting Bell to ground out to first.

“I think it was pretty obvious, by what went on in the ninth inning, why we did it that way,” Showalter said.

Doing it that way might make it more difficult for Showalter to navigate the final innings tonight. But he already knows what could have happened if he did it the other way.

“It crossed my mind (at) 7-2,” Showalter said. “We’ll think about it tomorrow.

“We have to get this one under our belt.”