Categories: 2023 Postgame Recaps

Mets unravel in eighth, gift Phillies series win

Trea Turner had an outstanding series finale on Sunday. (Cheryl Pursell)

Final Score: Phillies 7, Mets 6

The Mets are always there when you need them, Metting when you need it.

The Phillies needed to win on Sunday. After following up their best homestand of the season with their best road trip, they’d returned to Philadelphia and dropped three of four, on the verge of losing a letdown series to the Mets and finishing the homestand 1-4 against a pair of division rivals.

“Need” is different from “deserve,” which is also different from “get.” The Phillies shouldn’t have won on Sunday, but the Mets, who are in utter free-fall these days, completely unraveled in the eighth inning and gifted the Phillies a win for the second time in three days.

Entering the bottom of the eighth with a three-run lead, Mets relievers Josh Walker and Jeff Brigham combined to allow a hit, three walks and two hit-by-pitches — with a brutal Mets infield error on what should’ve been a rally-killing double play mixed in — to allow four Phillies runs with one ball hit out of the infield.

It came on a day when the Phillies were poised to waste one of the best performances of the season by Trea Turner. It was the first time as a Phillie that Turner has homered, collected one other hit and stolen two bases in the same game.

He got the scoring started with a solo homer in the first, his eighth of the year.

Then, in the third, Turner singled a run home after Edmundo Sosa led the inning off with a triple. And in the fifth, Turner walked, then picked up his 14th and 15th stolen bases in as many attempts to manufacture a run by himself.

Turner’s hit by pitch in the eighth was the second straight bases-loaded HBP (which immediately followed a bases-loaded walk) and gave the Phillies their decisive seventh run.

The Phillies also got a solid performance from Alec Bohm, but it came with a few asterisks. Bohm went 3-for-4 with a double and an RBI on the day, but he got thrown out trying to stretch a single into another double, and his RBI came on the botched grounder in the eighth that could’ve wound up a double play.

That work — the Mets’ work of handing the Phillies another win — erased a tough outing by Zack Wheeler, despite a recent hot streak and favorable conditions for the righty. He allowed five runs on nine hits in 5 1/3 innings, before Pete Alonso tacked on another run in the seventh against José Alvarado with his second-in-MLB 24th homer of the season.

It also erased some bad blown opportunities by the Phillies’ offense. Turner’s RBI single in the third helped them loaded the bases with one out, but they didn’t score. Nick Castellanos walked after Turner’s stolen-base magic with no outs in the fifth, but the heart of the order did nothing with it. Another Phillies out on the base paths, on Bohm’s single, was a tough way to start the sixth.

No matter. Craig Kimbrel closed things out, despite a leadoff HBP to Alonso.

The Phillies could have easily gone 0-5 on this homestand. Instead, the Mets, now 35-42, gave the Phillies, now 40-37, a series victory.

The Mets are always there when you need them, Metting when you need it.

Shibe Vintage Sports Notes