3 Mets most to blame for NL Wild Card defeat to Padres

1. Max Scherzer

While the offense’s overall lack of production was the most costly factor for New York in the series, the Game 1 performance of Max Scherzer can’t go overlooked or without having a blaming finger pointed at it.

If there was one thing that Mets fans and the team felt confident about coming into the postseason, it was that their 1-2 starting pitching combo of Scherzer and Jacob deGrom would be near impossible for any team to get through. But the former did not hold up his end of the bargain in that arrangement.

To put it plainly, Scherzer wasn’t just lackluster — he was downright awful. He lasted just 4.2 innings while giving up four home runs and seven earned runs in the performance. When you combine that with the ailing bats, that was always going to be a recipe for disaster, especially considering that his start put the Mets behind 7-0 at the time he exited the game after Manny Machado’s fifth-inning jack.

Scherzer was supposed to be the dominant force that would give the Mets an advantage as an opposing team would have to produce against elite stuff while the offense produced. When he was unable to do that, it put New York in a spot they didn’t foresee themselves ever being in and, ultimately, set the stage for the series loss.