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What Phillies Offense?

The Philadelphia Phillies built a vaunted offense in the postseason. Lately, they’ve ridden the offense back into the postseason race.

That was until they ran into the Mets pitching.

After Alec Bohm‘s first inning RBI single off Max Scherzer, the Phillies would not score another earned run in the series. If not for Rob Manfred’s gimmick rules, the Phillies wouldn’t have scored another run in the series.

It wasn’t just Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, and Chris Bassitt. It was everyone, and it was complete and utter domination.

Winning the NL East

The Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies had their crack at the New York Mets. Coming to Queens, the Braves and Phillies could not have been hotter, and their pitching rotations were perfectly aligned.

The Mets took six out of the eight games and expanded their division lead from 3.5 games to 5.5. They’re 39-15 against their division foes. That’s the most intra-division wins in the National League.

While the Mets haven’t yet run away with the division, we see they’re just flat out better than everyone in the division and will be able to take care of business over the final month-and-a-half of the season.

Canha Steps Up

The Mets went through a weird rash of injuries which forced Mark Canha to play third base for the first time since 2016. He’d get one chance during the game and made the play.

Canha was also arguably the Mets best hitter in the series leading the team with two RBI. Overall, Canha stepped up when the team needed him most. More than anything, that shows what a true leader he is.

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Injuries

As noted above, the Mets dealt with a rash of injuries on Friday leading to Canha playing third. Luckily, Jeff McNeil was able to play the rest of the weekend and was no worse for wear.

Unfortunately, Luis Guillorme went down twice in the series, the second time being a groin injury. Apparently, there is enough concern over the injury the Mets are considering calling up Brett Baty.

Looking at this Mets team right now the only thing that can get in their way is injuries.

More Cora Trouble

In the previous big NL East series, Joey Cora had an indefensibly bad send of Guillorme running them out of an inning where they had Ian Anderson on the ropes. Well, he did it again.

In the bottom of the ninth, Cora sent Starling Marte on a VERY shallow fly, and Matt Vierling having all his momentum towards home. Keep in mind, Marte has been protecting an injury leaving him truly unable to fully unleash his speed.

Well, Marte was out by a wide margin. Like a week before, it didn’t take a perfect throw. It just took a competent one. Another factor here is Cora showed a complete unawareness of the catcher with Travis d’Arnaud and J.T. Realmuto being among the best on these plays.

Again, Cora came to the Mets as the worst third base coach in the game. While he’s arguably been better than that, it two huge spots, he made indefensibly horrible calls. The Mets need him to be better.

Offense Sputtered

Since the trade deadline, the Mets offense had been terrific. They were decidedly not that in this series scoring just two runs over the first two games and eight over the three game series.

Honestly, this is just a tip your cap situation. Ranger Suarez has been great in the second half, and Aaron Nola is a very good pitcher. To the Mets credit, they got to Zack Wheeler.

Overall, what matters most is winning, and the Mets did that taking the series.