Seth Lugo, the fourth pitcher in the line of five Mets hurlers to combine for a no-hitter on Friday night, had no idea his team was on the cusp of history until he saw his replacement, Edwin Diaz, getting up in the bullpen to close it out.
“I came in, I saw [Diaz] warming up, I was in the gym in the ninth, and I looked up and saw the zero,” Lugo said after his 0.2 innings to contribute to the combined no-no. “I said ‘Drew, don’t say nothing, but look. We need to get outside.’ So it was the ninth inning for me.”
Lugo was calling to Drew Smith, also down in the clubhouse after he had relieved Tylor Megill and tossed 1.1 innings of hitless ball.
“I didn’t know until the eighth,” Smith said. “I was doing my arm care and I wasn’t even looking at the TV, but they had the audio on in the training room, and I heard Gary [Cohen] say something about history, then I looked at the zero…nobody knew in the bullpen.”
Well, at least one bullpen arm knew. Diaz, who closed it out with three strikeouts in the ninth, knew for a while, even before Joely Rodriguez came on in relief in the seventh. But Rodriguez, like his other fellow bullpen arms, had no idea what he was a part of.
“I realized it when I was in the training room, ninth inning, one out,” Rodriguez laughed. “I checked the TV and said, WHAT?! I said ‘Give me five minutes, I have to go out.’”
As for the starter, Megill was also late to the party of finding out what he and his teammates were on the cusp of accomplishing, which was the second no-hitter in franchise history.
“I didn’t know until late, yeah,” Megill said. “In the moment you don’t really pay attention to it. But later in the game, you start to look up at the scoreboard and see.”
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