Before we start, I must ask a very important question of our beautiful community. If there are any individuals out there who are well-versed in labor law, I humbly ask that you please reach out to me immediately. You see, I am absolutely convinced that the overlords here at Amazin’ Avenue are violating my rights as a worker in forcing me to watch and write about this game tonight. It is cruel and unusual punishment, a pure miscarriage of justice, and they must not be allowed to get away with it.
I deserve compensation for the emotional trauma I endured tonight, and I will not rest until I get it. So while I await for some heroic lawyer out there to help me prepare my multimillion dollar lawsuit against SB Nation, I will bitterly perform my duty and tell you about the torture porn I was forced to ingest this evening.
Freddy Peralta—hmm, how do I put this delicately?—got the absolute everloving piss beaten out of him tonight. After retiring the first two batters of the inning, Bryce Harper came up and socked a solo homer (that’s one extra-base hit; you’ll want to start keeping count) to right field to give the Phillies a quick 1-0 lead. Then an inning later, Peralta once again—to quote from the great philosophical scholar Keith Hernandez—got his tits lit. Alec Bohm led off the frame with a single (that was initially ruled as catch by Eric Wagaman in right, but was overturned upon review) and came around to score on a one-out double by J.T. Realmuto (two). One out later, Justin Crawford followed with a double of his own (three) off the wall in left-center field, bringing home the third run of the game. And these first two innings proved to be an appetizer of fecal matter that merely served to tide us over until the main entrée of excrement that was the bottom of the third.
Let’s just go through the nonsense beat-by-beat until we get to the point where Peralta mercifully made his exit:
- Kyle Schwarber leads off the inning with a solo homer (four).
- Harper follows with a double to right (five).
- Not an extra-base hit! But Brandon Marsh still ends up on second thanks to a throwing error by Marcus Semien, and Harper scores.
- An out! Bohm flies out to right.
- Back to the extra-base bananza, as Bryson Stott doubles to left (six) to score Marsh.
- One more for good measure! Realmuto hits his second double of the night (seven), scoring Stott.
- Another out! Strikeout! Just one more to end this hellish inning!
- Alas, not to be. Turner singles to left to score another (but not an extra-base hit, at least).
It’s 8-0 now, in case you stopped keeping track. Peralta then left the game and hit the showers so he wouldn’t be able to tell whether or not he was crying. Cionel Pérez came on and proved himself to be a good teammate and a good man, as he sought to make his fellow pitcher feel better by an extra-base hit of his own—in this case, the second homer of the inning to Schwarber (eight), making it 11-0 Phillies and putting ten earned runs on Peralta’s line.
Believe it or not, eleven runs of support was enough for Cy Young candidate Cristopher Sánchez. The Mets did get threats going against Cristopher Sánchez, as they got two baserunners on in both the second and third innings. Both times, however, they failed to bring any runs home. Mark Vientos was one of the culprits there, as he struck out with runners on first and second and one out in the second, but fear not! He made up for that failure by hitting a HUGE clutch solo homer with two outs in the fourth to cut the lead down to 11-1! Comeback szn?!?!
Nah. Pérez pitched a scoreless fourth, and then got two outs in the fifth before surrendering back-to-back singles and exiting the game for Tobias Myers. Harper then hit a gapper to left-center field (nine), scoring two runs to make it 13-1 and putting the two-time MVP on third to give him his first career cycle. It was around this time when I took the dog out for a quick walk, looked out into the beautiful night sky, and said a silent prayer that a meteor might come down and end all life on earth.
Sánchez ended up making it through six and giving up just the one run. Max Lazar came on in relief and the Mets took the opportunity to add some more meaningless runs, with Carson Benge socking a two-run homer to make it 13-3. And the Phillies took that personally, as they followed with two runs of their own against Myers in the bottom of the frame on the third home run of the night (ten!) off the bat of Kyle Schwarber. That inning was the last one in which we’d see an actual Mets pitcher pitch, as Zack Short took the mound in the bottom of the eighth inning… and recorded a 1-2-3 inning to do become the only Mets pitcher to hold the Phillies scoreless on the night. That’s baseball, Suzyn.
Anyway. The game ended after Jhoan Duran (who needed work after not pitching for the past week) tossed a scoreless ninth inning. But I’ll probably be talking about it with my therapist for years to come. The Mets will go for the series win tomorrow, with David Peterson facing off against Zack Wheeler. May God have mercy on us all.
SB Nation GameThreads
Box scores
Win Probability Added
FanGraphs" />
Big Mets winner: Eric Wagaman and Francisco Alvarez, +4% WPA
Big Mets loser: Freddy Peralta, -34% WPA
Mets pitchers: -35% WPA
Mets hitters: -15% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Francisco Alvarez single in the second, +3.9% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Bryce Harper solo homer in the first, -10.2% WPA
