On Sunday afternoon, the New York Mets completed their first four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals since 1986.
The historical comparisons will be of the far more recent variety for the Mets on Monday night, when they host the Philadelphia Phillies in the opener of a three-game series.
Tylor Megill (2-2, 1.40 ERA) is slated to start for the Mets against fellow right-hander Aaron Nola (0-4, 6.65).
The Mets remained hot after Brandon Nimmo laced a tiebreaking RBI single in the seventh inning of a 7-4 win over the Cardinals on Sunday, while the Phillies missed a chance to sweep the Miami Marlins when they squandered a three-run lead in a 7-5 loss in 10 innings.
The Phillies, who spent the majority of 2024 atop the National League East, won six of their first nine games against the Mets before dropping three of four in New York on the penultimate weekend of the regular season.
That series win was part of a furious sprint to the playoffs by the Mets, who earned the final NL wild-card berth by going 20-9 to end the season. New York then outlasted the Milwaukee Brewers in a wild-card series before upsetting the Phillies in four games in the NL Division Series, highlighted by Francisco Lindor hitting a grand slam in a 4-1 victory at a raucous Citi Field in Game 4 on Oct. 9.
“I expect it to be high energy,” Nimmo said Sunday. “They obviously don’t like the way things ended last year, and I’m sure they’d like to make a statement right away.”
The Phillies’ bullpen made all the wrong statements over the last two days, when their relievers combined to allow 15 runs (14 earned) in eight innings.
Philadelphia escaped with an 11-10 win on Saturday, as Jordan Romano allowed six runs in the ninth inning before Jose Alvarado recorded the final out.
The Phillies scored three times in the first inning and carried a 4-2 lead into the eighth on Sunday, when Orion Kerkering surrendered a three-run homer to Javier Sanoja. Philadelphia tied the score in the bottom half before the Marlins scored twice in the 10th.
The blown save was the major-league-leading sixth of the season for the Phillies, whose bullpen ERA rose to 5.81.
Philadelphia relievers finished 14th in the majors last season with a 3.94 ERA.
“It’s just part of the season, and I think that’ll even itself out over time,” manager Rob Thomson said.
For the Mets, Megill took the loss last Tuesday, when he allowed four runs (two earned) over five innings as New York fell to the Minnesota Twins, 6-3.
Megill is 3-1 with a 2.51 ERA in six career starts against the Phillies. He earned the win over Philadelphia on April 29, 2022, after tossing the first five innings of a combined no-hitter in the Mets’ 3-0 victory.
Nola suffered his fourth defeat in as many starts Wednesday after giving up seven runs (six earned) over 5 1/3 innings as the Phillies were routed 11-4 by the San Francisco Giants.
Nola is 10-9 with a 3.46 ERA in 28 starts against the Mets. He threw a shutout in his most recent appearance at Citi Field last May 14, when Nola allowed four hits and struck out eight in a 4-0 victory.
–Field Level Media
