NEW YORK — The situations were next to identical in the sixth inning Tuesday night.
In the top half at Citi Field, Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner walked to lead off the frame against Mets starter Sean Manaea. In the bottom half, Aaron Nola allowed Mark Vientos to single and issued a free pass to Brandon Nimmo.
Both occasioned visits to the mound. Both tiring starters faced hitters that had homered in the series.
There, the similarities ended.
The Mets capitalized where the Phillies couldn’t, two runs cuing a third late outburst in as many games to secure a 7-2 win and assume control of the best-of-5 National League Division Series.
How each team handled its opportunity broadly reflected what has transpired at the plate in this series.
After eight balls in nine pitches from Manaea and the would-be go-ahead run at the plate in a 2-0 game, the lefty adjusted. The Phillies helped him by swinging at six straight offerings.
Manaea went all off-speed to Bryce Harper, who swung through the first two and chased the third, manager Rob Thomson assessing afterward that the slugger was “trying to do too much.”
“I thought Manaea threw the ball really well,” Harper said. “I think he’s been throwing the ball really well as of late. So he got us today. He beat us. Obviously, we had some situations, me personally as well, that we didn’t come through and didn’t let it happen.”
Nick Castellanos chased a fastball out of the zone, fought off one in the zone, then lined an 0-2 changeup to second, right at Jose Iglesias. Schwarber was caught off for a double play.
“He threw me a good changeup away,” Castellanos said. “I stayed on it. I barreled it. A little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, first and third, run scores – it’s a different situation.”
Added Schwarber: “I’m at second, it’s kind of like one of those things. Even if I just freeze, I’m going to be out.”
The Mets opted for a different tack. The team that strung together two-strike hits to decide Game 1 forced Nola to use 21 pitches to Vientos, Nimmo and Pete Alonso, who walked after homering in his first at-bat.
Out came Nola, after 5-plus effective enough innings. Orion Kerkering nearly escaped, with a force at the plate hit on a grounder to second, then a mid-depth fly to left on which Nimmo couldn’t tag. But Starling Marte, a Phillies killer with a .368 career average against them, stayed back on a Kerkering sweeper to single home two runs and make it 4-0.
“It’s a tough job to have no outs with the bases loaded against a team like this, how they’re playing right now,” Nola said. “But (Kerkering) did a good job. He made a pretty good pitch to Marte. He got a base hit.”
If there was a little bit of bad luck, the Phillies with 12 hard-hit balls on the night to the Mets’ 10, remember two of those Mets hits left the park, from Alonso and Jesse Winker. And five walks drawn, four of whom scored, allowed the Mets to maximize their return from loud contact.
The Phillies need to find ways to earn that luck in a win-or-go-home Game 4 Wednesday. They’ll attempt to with Alec Bohm hitting 1-for-10 with just 19 pitches seen, with their outfield platoon of Johan Rojas, Brandon Marsh and Austin Hays a combined 1-for-17, Rojas owning the lone single and a walk.
Whoever it is, they’ll have to return to the mantra of controlling the strike zone, and quick.
“Sometimes it’s about chase in certain games,” Thomson said. “But sometimes it’s the fact that guys are throwing strikes and you need to get good pitches that you want and be using all the diamond. That’s what we always talk about.”
