View from New York: The Mets were undone by better team, and their own mistakes

In the end, it wasn’t a difficult play. Had Lucas Duda anticipated Eric Hosmer’s mad dash to the plate in the ninth inning, perhaps he would have taken a bit more time and made a good throw to end the game.

Instead he looked startled and rushed the throw, sailing it wide of Travis d’Arnaud as Citi Field crowd ready to celebrate instead gasped in disbelief.

It was a shocking way to lose the Series, and make no mistake, the game may have still been tied but everyone knew the Mets had blown it, especially the way they were hitting.

Yet it wasn’t all that surprising because, from start to finish in this World Series, the Mets couldn’t make the simple plays with the gloves when it counted most

And that turned out to be the biggest difference between these teams as the Royals won it in five games. The final on Sunday night was 7-2 as the Royals scored five runs in the 12th inning, and a magical season for the Mets ended very badly, with a frustrated crowd sarcastically cheering when Daniel Murphy recorded the second out of the inning.

Too bad, because the Series was evenly played in many ways. The Mets just weren’t up to the task of playing World Series baseball defensively.

In three of their four losses, bad defense proved critical, from errors by David Wright and Daniel Murphy in Games 1 and 4 to Duda’s wild throw on Sunday night, which was not ruled an error.

No, in the end, there was no doubt the Royals were better in just about every phase of the game. They outhit and outfielded the Mets, and they out-bullpened them too.

You can make an argument, in fact, that the biggest moment of the Series occurred in Game 1, when Jeurys Familia made the mistake of quick-pitching Eric Gordon rather than trusting his 97 mph sinker, and gave up that game-tying home run that changed everything.

Indeed, when you consider all the mistakes, the Mets have to go away from this Series feeling as if they could have won it. Either that or accepting the fact that they’re a flawed team that had a great run just to get to the World Series.

Yet there they were, with a two-run lead after eight innings on Sunday night, three outs away from a win that would have sent the series back to Kansas City.

At that point, Matt Harvey had delivered a brilliant start to make everyone forget about all the innings-limit controversy late in the season.

In fact, the irony was that his determination to finish off the game himself perhaps ended up costing the Mets the win, as Terry Collins admitted he allowed Harvey to talk him into leaving him for the ninth.

At the time, you couldn’t second-guess Collins. Harvey had breezed through the eighth inning; he’d thrown 104 pitches and he looked as if he had another one in him, especially when he sprinted to the mound to start the inning.

But as it turned out in this World Series, Collins was damned if you do, damned if you don’t when it came to his bullpen.

Familia hasn’t been quite the same lockdown closer that he was in the final weeks of the season, yet he was still by far the best option in a pen that became less and less trustworthy late in the year.

And Collins said that he and his coaching staff had talked all day about getting to just this position, where Harvey could hand the ball off to Familia.

Yet when Harvey told him he wanted to finish, Collins couldn’t say no.

“I went with my heart,” Collins said afterward. “I didn’t go with my gut.”

It was understandable, but when he saw that Harvey didn’t challenge Lorenzo Cain with a fastball on a 3-2 count, walking him instead with an off-speed pitch that was low, that should have told him to make a move.

Instead Harvey stayed in and gave up a double to the wall in left to Hosmer, putting the tying run in scoring positon. At that point Collins went to Familia, and a ground ball to first put Hosmer at third with one out.

Sal Perez then hit ground a ball to David Wright’s left, pulling him far enough away from the line to allow Hosmer to get far off the bag. Still, Wright didn’t expect Hosmer to break for the plate when he threw to first, and apparently Duda didn’t either, judging by the way he reacted, with a rushed throw that never had a chance.

It wasn’t a hard play, and the game should have been over, but that was the story of this World Series.

The Royals, with their contact-hitting and their speed, applied constant pressure that the Mets couldn’t handle.

“At the big-league level you shouldn’t be intimidated by speed,” Collins said. “But they’re very good at doing what they do. The Hosmer play, with a good throw he’s out. Lucas has a great arm, he just didn’t make a good throw.”

One last mistake in a series full of them.

This story was originally published November 2, 2015 at 8:15 PM with the headline "View from New York: The Mets were undone by better team, and their own mistakes."