In the ninth inning of a tie game in Game 2, Billy Wagner was on the mound at Shea Stadium. Last night in a similar situation, Aaron Heilman was on the hill. With apologies to Heilman, the Mets didn’t get beat with their best this time around.
Heilman was a stand-up guy in the losing clubhouse after dropping a guillotine on the 2006 season with a two-run, ninth-inning gopher ball to Yadier Molina. He answered all the questions patiently and as honestly as he could after the 3-1 loss to St. Louis in Game 7, even injecting gallows humor into the mix.
“He was able to get a piece of it and put it where Endy [Chavez] couldn’t catch it,” Heilman said of Molina. “It was a little too far for him this time.
“It’s unfortunate one pitch kinda makes for a bad outing.”
One hanging change-up makes for a long offseason, too, and plenty of second-guessing. Wagner was warming up in the Mets bullpen, but he had struggled throughout the NLCS, allowing seven hits and five earned runs over 22/3 innings. That’s a 16.88 ERA, if you really want to know. The Mets closer knew he was only coming into the game with a lead or if Heilman was replaced with a pinch-hitter, and he said he had no problem with that logic.
“I thought with all the righties coming up in that situation, I felt like we could go another inning with him and bring Billy in after that,” Willie Randolph said.
In Game 2, Heilman’s spot in the batting order led off the bottom of the eighth, and he had thrown 33 pitches after 11/3 innings in that scenario. Still, the question can be asked: Were the Mets running away from Wagner, especially with left-handed hitting Jim Edmonds leading off?
“This is totally different circumstances than the other night,” pitching coach Rick Peterson argued. “Heilman was fresh. We kept him fresh all series, and he was ready for two innings.
“He had a great eighth inning, and he was ready to go back out there for the ninth – regardless. Once we took the lead, Billy was going to come in the game. Totally irrelevant. Totally different circumstances.”
It’s also worth noting Randolph preferred Guillermo Mota in the eighth inning of Game 1, although Heilman hadn’t allowed a run in Game 2 or Game 6.
Last night in the eighth, Heilman froze pinch-hitter Scott Spiezio on a nasty 96-mph fastball at the knees and blew away Juan Encarnacion on a 94-mph fastball. The ninth was a different story, as Molina cemented his place in Cardinals’ lore with the go-ahead two-run bomb.
“He has nothing to put his head down for,” Wagner said. “He battled and he kept going back out there and he threw great all year long.”
