It’s down to a best-of-three series, and I’ll put my money on the Mets.
Many of us figured the Mets and Philadelphia Phillies would be even at one heading to Citi Field on Tuesday afternoon for Game 3. But the Mets could have had a 2-0 series lead had they held on to a 4-0 lead or taken their chances in extra innings. Neither happened, and the Phillies took a 7-6 victory in Sunday’s Game 2 after Nick Castellanos hit a game-winning RBI single off Tylor Megill in the ninth.
Sure, the Phillies could also make the case that they deserve to be 2-0 … if it weren’t for what turned out to be a fatal error when manager Rob Thomson left Zack Wheeler in to pitch the eighth inning with a 1-0 lead instead of taking him out after 111 pitches. Instead, the Mets scored five runs on five singles off Jeff Hoffman, Matt Straham, and Orion Kerkering in that inning and went on to a 6-2 victory in Saturday’s Game.
Conventional wisdom says the Mets now have an advantage. They are going home for Tuesday’s game, the team’s first home game since Sept. 22, with Sean Manaea on the mound. In 16 home starts this season, Manaea is 6-3 with a 3.75 ERA and 104 strikeouts. The Phillies will counter with Aaron Nola. Since 2018, he has a 2.49 ERA in 12 starts at Citi Field.
It’s premature to say this will be a pitchers’ duel because the Mets and Phillies play each other well, and both teams can hit and pitch. But I will say this: if the series goes five, the Mets can win it at Citizens Bank Park. They know how to hit, and most importantly, they know how to grind it out, as we saw last week in getting three come-from-behind wins.
Yes, the Phillies can trot out Wheeler in a Game 5, but the Mets can counter with David Peterson and then unveil Kodai Senga to carry more length in the game after throwing only 31 pitches in his last outing. Plus, there will be plenty of pressure on the Phillies to win the series. The Phillies have a recent history of coming up small when it matters. We saw that in the World Series two years ago and again in the NLCS last year when they blew a 3-2 series lead to the Arizona Diamondbacks and lost Game 6 and 7 at home.
The bottom line is that what started as a five-game series is now down to the best of three. Perhaps just as notable is that we seem to have a rivalry brewing between the Phillies and Mets, something that hasn’t been the case for quite some time, if ever.
