CHICAGO — With the Mets and Chicago Cubs locked in a tight Wild Card battle, Sunday night’s series finale felt bigger than a typical game in June usually would.
It was a star-studded affair at Wrigley Field, with celebrities like Bill Murray and Dave Matthews coming out to celebrate the unveiling of Ryne Sandberg‘s statue. A packed crowd of nearly 40,000 was eager to see the Cubs pick up where they left off in the second game of the series, when they crushed the Mets by 10 runs.
Instead, Cubs fans were left disappointed. The Mets won 5-2 to take the series, their fourth in a row and 12th of the season. They finished the road trip 4-2 and have won 13 of their last 17 games.
However, uncertainty comes with this win as closer Edwin Diaz was ejected in the ninth inning by third base umpire Vic Carapazza during his routine check for foreign substances. Diaz has been a huge key to the Mets’ recent resurgence and they now risk losing the right-hander for 10 games, with a sticky stuff ejection carrying an automatic suspension.
Diaz and the Mets insist it was sweat, rosin and dirt. Manager Carlos Mendoza said Carapazza said Diaz’s hand had too much rosin.
“They thought it was too much,” Mendoza said. “Diaz kept saying he was rose in sweat and dirt, and Vic thought that he crossed the line there. You know, obviously the rules are the rules. And, you know, they made the decision to throw him out.”
Carapazza later told a pool reporter that Diaz had a foreign substance on his hand.
“I touched his hand. Grabbed his hand. The substance was extremely sticky. Discolored. That was that,” Carapazza said. “It definitely wasn’t rosin and sweat. We’ve checked 1000’s of these. I know what that feeling is. This was very sticky.”
Diaz maintained that he used nothing illegal and that he always puts his hand in the dirt. The ESPN broadcast showed a close-up of Diaz’s hand, which appeared to have something coating his palm.
“At the end of the day, I was using rock rosin, sweat and I put my hand on the dirt,”
Right-hander Drew Smith started the ninth in place of Diaz, getting the first two outs before giving up a single to Dansby Swanson. Left-hander Jake Diekman came in for the one-out save, striking out Patrick Wisdom on three pitches (three saves).
Francisco Lindor hit his 13th home run of the season, Brandon Nimmo hit his 11th and Mark Vientos practically hit one out to Wisconsin for his seventh of the year. Luis Severino (5-2) shut out the Cubs out over six innings, allowing three hits and striking out 10.
“He was in complete control of the game today,” Mendoza said of Severino.
The Mets came back after Dedniel Nuñez gave up a two-run homer to Christopher Morel in the seventh. The two-run blast cut the lead in half, but Vientos hit a 451-foot bomb off Tyson Miller in the next inning.
Vientos snapped an 0-for-14 skid with the longest homer of his career, hitting the ball into the center field bleachers underneath the old scoreboard.
With the Mets (37-39) up 4-0 in the sixth, Severino put two on with none out. He rung up Michael Busch before facing Cody Bellinger. The outfielder fouled off the first two pitches to go 0-2 before Severino threw him a changeup, but Bellinger didn’t bite.
At 1-2, Bellinger fouled off the next three pitches and then got a fastball outside of the zone to work the count full. He fouled off four more, with the Wrigley Field faithful giving him a standing ovation at pitch No. 11.
The ovation might have been for Bellinger, but Severino used it to his advantage.
“I knew it was not for me,” Severino said. “I put it like, OK, I have to take that to fuel me to make a good pitch here. I like the atmosphere, you know? I like that playoff atmosphere.”
Bellinger swung on pitch No. 12 and missed. Severino won the battle, then quickly retired Seiya Suzuki for the third out.
“It was my best fastball against his best swing,” Severino said. “I put in a good spot and won the battle.”
Mendoza had Nuñez warming up, but left Severino in to finish the job with Suzuki, seeing a pitcher who still wanted the ball.
“I went out there and I was pretty firm that it was his game,” Mendoza said. “[Suzuki] was his batter. And I told him that, I was like, ‘Give me everything you got here. This is your game.”
Lindor and Nimmo went back-to-back off right-hander Javier Assad in the third with opposite-field home runs to left field. Harrison Bader hit a one-out double to bring up Lindor, who battled Assad for eight pitches before finally connecting on a full-count cutter. Nimmo then took Assad deep for his fourth homer in his last six games, extending his hitting streak to nine games.
“Sometimes it gets tough here, I play here where you hit the ball 110 and goes nowhere,” Lindor said. “I mean, today, Pete (Alonso) hit one 110 and it was on out. So I’ll take whatever I can.”
Assad was charged with four earned runs on seven hits, walking one and striking out none over 4 1/3 innings.