One recipe for a good baseball game? A sequence of unlikely events. No-hitters flipped into walkoffs, storming back to a ninth-inning win, Houdini-ing your way out of what looks like statistical doom, that kind of thing.
Monday night’s game in Philadelphia was a good game, much as we would have preferred a duller one with a different verdict. And it certainly had its share of unlikely events.
For openers, a 1-0 victory — by anybody — at this bandbox?
Or how about Aaron Nola [1] spitting in the face of a terrible season to shut down the Mets and effectively lock up the division for the Phils?
Or how about the Mets tormenting the highly capable Jhoan Duran [2] again, except this time the ninth-inning magic fizzled?
Or how about Ryan Helsley [3] working a 1-2-3 inning?
OK, that last one’s a little mean-spirited. But c’mon, you were as shocked as I was. (More meanness: Francisco Alvarez [4] saved Helsley from an pitch-clock violation and a walk, and way too many of Helsley’s sliders hung in the middle of the plate. But still: progress!)
The Mets’ offense looked stagnant once again, the latest episode of ebb in a season of maddening ebb and flow. (More like once-a-generation drought alternating with flash flooding, at the risk of pummeling our poor metaphor.) But give some credit to Nola: He put aside his disobedient curve as his primary pitch and it proved a canny adjustment that left the Mets guessing wrong all night.
For our part, Nolan McLean [5] looked good again — even better when you consider that he had to deal with a misfiring sweeper and a fingernail that ripped off early in the game. It wasn’t enough last night, but I’ll gladly take a decade of McLean departing in the sixth having given up one run in Philadelphia, thank you very much.
The Mets — perhaps you’ve heard — haven’t come back to win a single game in which they’ve trailed after eight, the only team still left bearing that burden in 2025. (It’s a quirk, however much we insist during postgame fuming that it’s a sign of weak moral fiber.)
It looked like Monday night would be the end of that streak, as Duran’s ninth inning began as a rerun of his recent nightmare [6] at Citi Field. Pete Alonso [7] bounced a single up the middle and then departed for pinch-runner Ronny Mauricio [8], Brandon Nimmo [9] just missed a carbon copy of Brett Baty [10]‘s little duck-snort hit to left, and Mark Vientos [11] lined a double over the head of Nick Castellanos [12].
Oh, that play. I assume Mauricio would score and tie the game, and was dumbfounded when he only wound up on third. But not all doubles into the corner are the same: The ball’s trajectory was low and it wasn’t clear that it would get over Castellanos’s head, Mauricio was blocked out by the fielder, and he might have remembered that Castellanos is a terrible defender except against the Mets, whose presence seems to transform him into Garry Maddox [13].
So Mauricio only reached third, leaving the Mets with second and third and one out and putting the game in the hands of Jeff McNeil [14] and Alvarez. McNeil is up there with Juan Soto [15] and Francisco Lindor [16] for “Met I’d most want to see when anything but a strikeout will get the job done” (maybe even a little ahead of Lindor) and he just missed a double down the line that would have given the Mets the lead and caused Duran’s agent to book a therapist posthaste.
But the ball went foul and four pitches later Duran threw 102 MPH past McNeil for the second out. Alvarez then arrived at the plate eager bordering on desperate to deliver, the kind of self-sabotaging AB he’d largely stopped having. Not on this night, though: Duran threw him three curve balls he couldn’t have hit with an oar and the game was over.
1-0 Phillies [17]. Who’da thunk it?