That’s the stuff: Phillies 5, Mets 4

I saw a stat yesterday that the Yankees’ Gleyber Torres, who has been in the league since 2018, already has three career walk-off hits. Knowing the Phillies had none this year, I checked what their total as a team has been since Torres entered the league: seven. Given enough time, one guy could catch up with a whole franchise that for some reason wasn’t wasn’t walking it off too often (they were getting walked-off on, however—14 times since the start of 2018).

But Torres has a little more work to do after last night, when the Phillies beat the Mets for the third straight time, 5-4, in the bottom of the tenth of a deep fly ball from Jay Bruce.

It took another comeback, but right now, this team looks like it could beat the Mets on autopilot. Down 4-0 in the sixth after Jeff McNeil had put together a solid night (2-for-4 with an RBI double and a home run), the Phillies got to work. Jean Segura started with a home run to end the shutout off the prickly Jason Vargas, and in the seventh, Cesar Hernandez followed J.T. Realmuto’s lead-off double with an RBI ground-rule double to make it 4-2.

The Mets beckoned the Phillies to keep the seventh inning going with two outs after Brad Miller walked and Scott Kingery struck out on a wild pitch and safely reached first base. Segura came to the plate, a career .148 hitter with the bases loaded for some reason, but that number hopped a bit after his single soared just over the reach of a bouncing Robinson Cano at second. Two runs came into score and the game was tied at 4-4.

Now all there was left to do was win the game, which, for the past few weeks, has appeared to be an insurmountable task. But this is a new team—a team powered by bamboo and playing the Mets—and taking the lead back is simply what they do.

The Mets had turned to their closer, the struggling Edwin Diaz, to survive the bottom of the ninth, and went with Steven Nogosek in the tenth, who failed to record an out. Rhys Hoskins worked a long at-bat that ended in a lead-off walk, followed by a Realmuto single. Roman Quinn was strategically inserted on second base, but barely had to reach second gear on Bruce’s long fly ball out of the reach of Mets center fielder Juan Lagares, which allowed Quinn to jog home as the winning run.

The Phillies play one more game against the Mets, a matinee Thursday afternoon to try and sweep the four-game series, but I think we can all agree: I wish this series could never end. There’s no telling what awaits the Phillies after it—I mean, I guess the schedule does—but for now, all we can say is that after a seven-game losing streak and the loss of all hope, these three (hopefully four) wins are exactly what the Phillies needed.