The San Diego Padres are halfway to their second playoff series win in three years following a 7-1 victory over the New York Mets in Game 1 of their National League Wild Card series at Citi Field.
Josh Bell and Manny Machado each homered, two of four San Diego hit off of New York ace Max Scherzer and Yu Darvish beat the Mets for the third time this season.
"This is not a game you normally see out of Max, so we were fortunate", said Padres manager Bob Melvin.
Jurickson Profar and Trent Grisham also went deep against Scherzer and the three-time Cy Young award winner was clearly disappointed in his outing for the NL East co-champions.
"Baseball can take you to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and this is one of the lowest of lows", he said.
Darvish, the National League pitcher of the month in September, got into early trouble in the bottom of the first, but escaped to throw seven innings of six-hit ball for his first postseason victory since 2017.
Eduardo Escobar was the only Mets hitter to solve the Japanese veteran, driving in the lone New York run with a solo home run and adding a double.
Bell got San Diego off to a good start, homering for the first time since September 6th to make it 2-0 and Grisham, just a .107 hitter since the end of August, made it 3-0 with a solo blast in the third.
"Hopefully, this gets him going", Melvin said.
Profar effectively ended any chance the Mets had of coming back by launching a Scherzer pitch just inside the right field foul pole and two batters later, Machado completed the onslaught.
"My fastball was running on me", Scherzer said. "When my fastball's flat and then running, that's usually when I get hit a lot. Obviously tonight I got hit a lot."
Look ahead to Game 2
Ian Snell will try to close the series out for San Diego. The 2018 AL Cy Young winner with Tampa Bay has allowed one run or fewer in 13 of his last 17 starts.
The Mets will turn to Jacob DeGrom, the other half of their vaunted pitching duo, but he's struggled in recent outings. going 0-3 with an uncharacteristic 6.00 ERA in his last four starts.