I can’t prove it, but Met losses to the Phillies are the most annoying losses there are. The Phillies have become the new Marlins.
Move over, Miami. You’re no longer quite that team.
All losses are the worst, and I don’t doubt that if you catch me after a defeat at the hands of the Dodgers, the Padres, whoever, that I will testify that the experience was particularly awful. But losing to the Phillies has lately left me more annoyed than I can remember being toward anybody since the heyday of the useless Marlins (not to be confused with the contending Marlins, who are a whole other kettle of undesirable fish).
This has nothing to do with the dormant Mets-Phillies rivalry, a feud without fuse for a few years now, what with us relatively up and them undeniably down. I don’t like seeing Ryan Howard and Carlos Ruiz thawed out, but even the presence of unfrozen caveman first baseman and catcher doesn’t automatically stoke the old competitive fires. It has nothing to do with the feisty fans down the Turnpike. I don’t even have it in for any given Phillie.
That’s probably the thing. There isn’t an Utley or a Rollins in the bunch, not yet. They may possess pockets of talent, but they’re not hateful. Yet they do something against the Mets more consistently than any other opponent.
They win almost only close games against us. Check out the scores of every game the Mets have lost to the Phillies over the past three seasons.
3-2.
5-4.
6-5.
6-0.
7-6.
7-2.
3-1.
14-8.
4-3.
7-5.
3-0.
1-0.
5-2.
5-4.
And, on Saturday night [1], 4-2.
That’s fifteen losses since 2014 (not a terrible ratio for a team we play nineteen times annually). Twelve of them were in save opportunity range, no more than three runs. Six were by one run. I can’t the say Phillies 14 Mets 8 was aspirational, exactly, but if you have to lose, you don’t mind once in a while sucking it up early and moving on.
You can’t do that in these Phillie losses. You know the games could’ve been won and it irks the hell out of you they weren’t. All it would have taken was one hit with runners in scoring position; one more suitably deep fly ball with a man on third and less than two out; one fewer ball thrown away; one luckier bounce; one less sign of vitality from the otherwise cryogenically preserved remnants of the Phillies we used to hate on merit.
The Mets did several things well Saturday night. There was a large enough sum of parts to win, but not enough of a whole not to lose. The game didn’t break their way. Some games won’t. Sometimes you’re comfortable with a shrug. Against Philadelphia, it’s too close to rhetorically ask, whaddayagonna do?
You’re gonna get another hit, make a better throw, keep a runner from taking an extra base. You’re gonna not wonder how you lost to these guys when the game was so winnable.
You should, anyway.