PHILADELPHIA — The similarities have been teased out plenty since Pete Alonso’s blast pierced the Milwaukee night Thursday.
In the 2024 New York Mets, you needn’t look hard to see the 2022 Phillies. The torrid finish to reach the postseason. The Wild Card heroics. The NL East usurper against the long-since crowned division champ. Even the herculean road trips to end the season echo: 11 games in 16 days for the Mets when they return to Citi Field for Game 3, 14 in 19 for the Phillies two years ago.
Add another to the list. Game 1 of the National League Division Series, just as the Phillies had in starting their pennant run, dealt their opponent a complete demoralization out of the gates.
The Mets celebrated their liberation from under the thumb of a brilliant Zack Wheeler with an eighth-inning five spot. Five hits, four after being down 0-2 in the count, off the Phillies’ highest-leverage relievers not only decided a 6-2 win but threatens to set the tone for what Phillies fans fear will be a brief series.
It squandered the dream start of a Kyle Schwarber leadoff home run. It frittered away magnificence from Wheeler, who allowed one hit and six base-runners over seven innings, then watched his bullpen match the base-runner figure in the exasperating eighth. And it plunged the Phillies into the same existential anxiety on which last October ended, blitzed at home by what blueprinted to be an inferior Arizona team that scrapped and clawed and earned its way to the next round.
“As an offense, we wasted that start,” said Bryce Harper, whose eighth-inning double was the first hit since a Schwarber single in the third. “It’s the same thing, chasing balls in the dirt, didn’t work deep into counts like we should’ve.”
Wheeler did everything that Atlanta’s Max Fried – then the NL Cy Young runner-up, another potential link – didn’t in the 2022 opener. Then, the Phillies jumped all over the Braves with a two-out rally of four singles for a 2-0 lead. They tacked on two in the third, then two in the fourth. Their pitching staff depleted from the Wild Card, Rob Thomson chopped and changed to record 27 outs.
Saturday, Wheeler made sure the Mets didn’t build similar momentum from the start. He struck out nine, walked four (a playoff career high), but allowed a solitary single to Mark Vientos in the fourth inning. In the process, he passed Steve Carlton and tied Cole Hamels with 77 playoff strikeouts, the franchise’s all-time lead.
But Wheeler could only watch as the eighth disintegrated in a crushing blow – or from the Mets’ perspective, a distillation of exquisite playoff persistence. Francisco Alvarez, after a first-pitch strike, singled off Jeff Hoffman. Francisco Lindor, down 0-2, worked a walk. Vientos, down 0-2, turned a meaty 1-2 slider into center for an RBI single.
Exit Hoffman, enter Matt Strahm. Continue the parade.
Brandon Nimmo fell behind 0-2, then shortened up to punch an RBI single the other way for a 2-1 lead. That was the best at-bat of the bunch until Jose Iglesias fouled off seven 0-2 pitches before singling off Strahm, who threw all 17 of his pitches for strikes.
“They smelled blood in the water, they got scrappy,” Strahm said. “And we got got.”
Add in a J.D. Martinez single off Orion Kerkering and sacrifice flies from Pete Alonso and Starling Marte, and the tide may have irrevocably turned eight innings into the series.
The resonance to last October was clear enough for Harper to comment on it. The Phillies only struck out eight times – two from Nick Castellanos, two from Trea Turner. But they made precious little solid contact against five pitchers, including starter Kodai Senga, who in his first outing since June got six outs without another hit allowed after the Schwarber bomb. Harper’s strikeout against David Peterson, chasing four pitches outside of the zone, typified the Mets’ approach.
“They’re going to bury stuff and try to get us to chase as much as possible,” Harper said. “Obviously they’ve got really good pitching. But we’ve got really good hitters in here, and we have to bear down and understand how to do it.”
The defining characteristic of the 2022 Phillies was adaptability. Rocking aces, rallying, winning games started by Wheeler or Bailey Falter – that team was resilient, its luck lasting until Houston.
That’s how the Mets looked in Game 1. And it’s what the Phillies will have to summon soon.
“It’s going to be a grind,” Castellanos said. “It’s going to be the same for us as it is for them. We’ve to find a way to put together great at-bats and score more runs than them.”
Contact Matthew De George at [email protected].
