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The Mets (73–60) lost to the Phillies (73–59) by the score of 8 to 7 in Citizen’s Bank Park.
For a recap, boxscore, stats, etc., go to SNY.tv.
Despite the result, this was, without a doubt, the most entertaining baseball game of the season, and one of the best games I have seen in years.
Actually, it was like watching three separate games.
In the first game, from the first inning through the fourth, the Mets dominated, jumping out to a seven-run lead, thanks to home runs from Damion Easley and Fernando Tatis, and early success from Pedro Martinez, who struck out Pat Burrell to end the third with a runner on second.
In the second game, from the fifth inning through the ninth, the Phillies dominated, thanks to home runs from Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, all while shutting down New York’s offense, which went scoreless through much of the second-half of the game, per usual. Meanwhile, the Phillies, who were one strike away from losing the game twice, scored in the ninth to send the game to extra innings.
In the final game, from the ninth inning on, during which I officially chewed off all of my finger nails, both teams played outstanding defense, especially David Wright, Carlos Delgado and Ryan Howard, who came up with stellar grabs to end innings, all while Aaron 
Heilman, who is clearly doing his best to kill me with a heart-attack, pitched three – yes, three - scoreless, long, stressful, laborious innings, during the last of which he struck out Chase Utley and Howard to end the inning.
However, Shane Victorino, who had not reached base in his previous six plate appearances in the game, started the bottom of the 13th inning with a triple against Scott Schoeneweis – helped out by Delgado not playing the line. The Mets and Schoeneweis then chose to walk the bases loaded with no outs. Brett Myers took five pitches, three for strikes, for one out, but Chris Coste ripped a fly ball deep to center to bring home the winning run.
With the win, the Phillies move back in to first place in the NL East – with 29 games left to play.
Also, it’s worth noting that Martinez coughed up five runs in two innings, in the fourth and fifth inning, when the Mets had a seven-run lead, which is very, very disappointing, to say the least – and it’s worth repeating, again, the Mets did not score a run in the final nine innings of tonight’s game, continuing a trend that will have to change if they intend on winning this division.
The Mets conclude their two-game series with the Phillies tomorrow night in Philadelphia, with Johan Santana (12-7, 2.64 ERA) taking on Kyle Kendrick (11-7, 4.87 ERA).
Time to earn your money, Johan. Sleep tight.
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Well every other heart wrenching loss has led to a win streak, so get winning boys. You owe me that for the pile of **** talking i have to hear ALL DAY tomorrow. Just like I did ALL LAST WINTER.
Oh my lord. I normally stay out of the comments when I know it’s going to be ugly, but this is so over the top it’s just sheer entertainment. People. We are .5 game out of FIRST PLACE, on 8/26. In 2008, having won the division once in the last two decades.
And, probably, we get the lead back again tomorrow with Santana pitching.
The psychology of fans is a fascinating thing. It’s like you all really want to give yourselves ulcers. I understand the nail-biting game watching distress, in fact I myself had to turn the game off. But I retain a little perspective, for chrissake. We all knew going in that a split would be good here, and that if we had a loss it would likely be the Pedro game.
It was one game.
i recall losing the East by “just 1 game”
they ALL matter… esp when you have a 7 run lead with first place on the line.
YOU GO !!!! Good call, dude.
Thank you tina. People here dont seem to understand that the baseball season did not end on 8/26!!!! We are half a game out of first with our ace on the hill tonight..GET A GRIP PEOPLE…still a whole month to play out.
First off’ best post in a long time Cerrone.
While this was an excrutiating loss, the Mets have bounced back from these series opening excrutiating losses to the Phils all season. We will bounce back again. The formula: Santana v Kendrick, win that, Phils go to Chicago, we lead the division again.
Exactly. Even though it’s a 2 game set, it practically has the significance of 4 games.
The Mets were up 1/2 before this start. They could have ranged as high as up 2 1/2 to being down 1 1/2 games in just a matter of two games. If Johan gets things done tomorrow, than we can forget this whole thing ever happened. With the way how the Brewers are playing it’ll probably gladly be our last time playing in Philly for the year. Unless of course we play a 163rd game and lose the coin flip again or what ever determines who’d get home field in such a scenario.
It’s all about knowing how to bear with the season. Knowing how to not get down on the team. These kinds of losses jet unexpected winning streaks. Maybe that’ll come. It’s just one loss. It’s more so that they’ve lost 3 games in 4 games that bugs me. Philly’s gotten hot and the Mets couldn’t play better than average against the Astros. Now we’re paying.
“Exactly. Even though it’s a 2 game set, it practically has the significance of 4 games.”
This has to be the the most hillarious comment ive read so far. How do you figure this carrys the significance of 4 games…please enlighten because last time i checked the worst case senario would be for us to be down a game and a half. Had this been a 4 game set the worst case scenario would be 3 and a half…BIG DIFFERANCE if you ask me.
Just because the Phillies got a tough schedule doesn’t mean the Mets don’t. And just like the Mets have had there hot runs, the Phillies have too. Up until Saturday, the Mets had won 10 of 11. Philadelphia currently has won 8 of their last 9.
You know what’s all funny though? Even with the recent success of the Mets, since the first game of the last series they had a month ago on July 22nd, they have nearly the same exact record. That record is 20-14. I may be off by a half way, but here’s how it’s looked.
Phillies since July 22nd: 20-14
1-3
5-0
3-2
3-8
8-1
Mets since July 22nd: 20-14
5-3
1-5
3-2
10-1
1-3
Only difference now is we don’t have to look over our shoulder so much with the Marlins and the wild card is more out of reach. How about the Marlins lost tonight. Weren’t they up like 9-3 and lost to Atlanta 10-9 in the ninth?
At least we know it’ll be all the sweeter if we take the division. Although it could be all the more heart breaking and painful to lose. If you really think about it, tomorrow could be the difference maker of who’s in and who’s out. Could have said the same about yesterday. It seems like the Mets always have the extra thing that says they should have done it. They’re like a ref who calls BS fouls to keep the other team in the game. The Phillies just catch the Mets at their weakest points.
Cerrone posted what he did so the readers would get as mad or more mad at him instead of the team.
Looked like it worked.
Went to sleep in the 12 - I KNEW the Mets wouldn’t get away with a win in this one. Philadelphia is adept at stealing games in that awful bandbox. Its like Yankee Stadium West.
Show or Heilman would get beat somehow. Our bullpen is awful and (besides playing in a little league feel CBP) losing to that team, who aren’t better than us. They just scrap it out.
The Mets would be ahead by more than a handful of games if it weren’t for this bullpen. 38 (leads NL?) blown leads compared to Phils 22?
When does the organization STOP the insanity and have some pride in itself? Second in NY, second in NL East, 1999 NCLS, 2000 WS, 2006 NLCS, 2007 reg. season? We’ve had more success than PA has EVER had, than most teams ever had. Doesn’t the Metropolitans have a better history to draw from? Can’t Keith or Seaver or, Bobby V. even, talk to this team - remind them they have something special to live up to?
Yes, there is plenty of season left - 1/2 game doesn’t make a season. It only made one last year. Last year.
We are the Atlanta of the 1990’s to these Phillies - 2006 and 2007 proved it. Something horrible happened last year. They beat this team because they let them. They are under the illusion that they are awesome, but they just have a better bullpen, guys. That’s it. The numbers prove it.
If we win the division by 1/2 game - great. We’ll might lose in the playoffs anyway. That’s fine, but so will they because they just ain’t better. The proof of the Mets winning another division reminds them THEY are a second place team, a second place city. 10,000 losses and still counting….
You can’t win the division by a half game…MLB would make the teams play an even number of games.*
*1981 strike shortened season the exception.
1/2 game, 1 game, 10 games - whatever gives us the division.
Yankee Stadium West? Geography?
Instead of agreeing or disagreeing - I get a geography lesson.
this was a horrible game. I’m a Met fan, not some abstract “fan” of interesting games.
At least I don’t feel silly for posting after Moyer got knocked out that the Mets were done scoring, so it was up to the P to hold the Phils below 7.
I went to bed after they tied it up in the 9th. So I don’t even want to know how many more opportunities they blew in extras to win it.
The pen is going to give us all gray hair, and probably be the one area of the team that you can pint to as having cost them a spot in the post season when they fall short.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA……THE PHILLIES WIN!!!
If we as fans are going to invest our hearts and souls in this team they CANT loose a game like this to the Phillies. After the emotion of 2006 and 2007 we are getting tired of it. When will we see the light at the end of the tunnell?? Im NOT talking about the train being driven by the Phillies that just ran us over, either. We want some pay back and we want to win. Enough with the excuses and reasones for another tough loss. Just put up and shut up and WIN !!!!!
It hurt like hell to lose, but it was an incredible and amazing game. More exciting than any other game this year.
It was a horrible loss which Santana will probably and hopefully erase today, but Matt is absolutely right as usual, and any baseball fan had to think it was an incredible game, regardless of how horrible the loss was.
And for me, maybe it was made easier by the fact that as soon as the horrible, awful Schoeneweis came in I knew for sure it was over. He is for me what Castillo is for so many of you. The worst.
i dont care how incredible the game was. I dont care how “entertaining” it was.
It is PATHETIC, TRULY PATHETIC that this mets team CONSISTENTLY lets these “fighin phils” back into every game. How a 7 run lead ISNT safe, how a 10 run lead ISNT safe, is BEYOND horrible. This team should be ASHAMED of itself.
We have now given the phils FULL confidence that even if we’re up by 20, they have a chance to win, or at least lose 20-19
I am SICKENED by this loss, SICKENED.
This 2008 mets team is PATHETIC
Pathetic is a little strong, no? The offense strangely goes to sleep after the early innings and our bullpen is very mediocre, but it is August 27 and we are half a game out and with the way Santana has pitched, hopefully back in first in about 14 hours.
We are not the 1986 Mets, that is for sure, but we are not pathetic.
Remember the loss in that first game at Shea to the Phils a while back when everyone was sure the sky had officially fallen and the season was over and 3 game sweep blahblahblah?? And we won the next two.
Let’s win tonight and move on.
Its really a downer when the offense puts up 7 runs and then your pitchers give it all back including Pedro giving up 5 in 5 innings.
This is a bad loss, no doubt….but this team seems to not care so much whether they have a bad loss, they just go out the next day and win….I specifically remember numerous bad losses for this team, then the Mets go out and win the next one or two against that particular team, whether it be the Phils or the Marlins or the Brewers.
Look guys this is the Mets, if you thought it was gonna be easy you have to find another team. Yes there is the possibility of winning, but there is always the possibility of being heartbroken as well, for those of you that don’t have the stomach they should get out now, but for those of us who will always believe, all you can do is turn the page and wait for Johan to pitch tonight.
Lets Go Mets!
agreed. And for those of use who have at least the smallest amount of rational to understand WE ARE ONLY A HALF GAME OUT OF FIRST!!! will realize with a win by santana we will be sitting right where we were before this series with us playing a fading marlin team and the phillies playing the cubs…..
As soon as the Mets went up seven runs, I knew we were doomed.
But seriously, this is the kind of confidence boost for the Phillies that can carry them the rest of the season. Every time I post that the Mets are the better team, but the Phillies are the tougher team, someone or other goes ballistic and pulls out stats showing that there’s some perfectly unremarkable reason for the most recent loss, having nothing whatever to do with “heart” or “toughness.”
But sometimes–occasionally–stats do not tell the whole story.
In extra innings, the Phillies put together a threat each time they came to the plate. They had a plan. It was clear they’d eventually break through. Only a matter of time. Meanwhile, the Mets went quietly through the motions. Over and over again. Weak groundouts on hitter’s counts. Swinging at ball four. Poor fundamental baseball, more times than I can recall.
And yet the Met hitters are generally better hitters than the Phillies who beat them so many times last night. The Mets looked as if they just didn’t want to be there after the lead was squandered. It’s worth recalling that the dregs of the Philly bullpen SHUT OUT the mighty NY Mets for a full nine innings.
The Phillies stayed in the game even when down seven runs. The Mets lack that kind of focus and toughness in adversity. (They also have one of the worst bullpens in the majors). And it’s going to cost them a trip to the postseason.
You can write it off to some kind of statistical anomaly. You can say “Well it’s only one game. Happens every day. Get over it.” But watching the kind of baseball the Mets play in tough situations, the kind of meltdown they suffer when handed an apparently insurmountable lead, has convinced me that they lack some attribute (call it what you want) that a playoff team needs.
yea a overused bullpen. Look like you said has nothing do do with heart, it has all to do however with execution. The phillies were the first ones to execute and thus they won. Our offense does not execute and we lost. Simple as that.
Didn’t the Mets rebound after a brutal loss to the Phils in the last series they played? This has happened in just about every series we have played with the Phillies this year yet we have gone on to win the series, I think, every time.
While losing lasts night’s game totally sucked they really only needed a split in this series (not that I am excusing yesterday’s loss, but its a TWO game ROAD series). Next week’s series at Shea is a lot more important.
Agree 100 percent.
I agree, good teams score runs late, “insurance runs” if you will. There have been precious few instances of the Mets looking like a playoff contender this year.
And can we stop pinning this game on the bullpen, I mean seriously! they pitched 8 innings and gave up two runs! Heilman went three scoreless, Stokes 2 scoreless, Ayala gave up a run because Schneider couldn’t catch the damn ball.
THIS IS NOT THE BULLPEN’S FAULT
wait — isn’t Schnieder a brilliant defensive cathcer?
If stupid Castro wouldn’t get hurt every five seconds maybe he would have caught the ball
maybe if stupid omar understood the rules Jesus Flores would have caught the ball
*Arnold voice* ” HA - that’s a good one!”
We have had really brutal loses like this before to the philles and have come from them why is this one any different. We are a 1/2 a game out of first place. If we win tonight we are back in first again. Why is everyone waiting for the Bleeping shoe to drop. I sick and tired of fans that don’t stand behind the no matter what, even if they think the entire team is going choke. I am sick of those type’s of fans. Go ahead and you can now begin to bash me because of what i think.
I totally agree with you. I’m not even sure this is the worst loss to the Phillies this season! I personally was much more distraught over the 7/22 game at Shea when they scored 6 runs in the 9th off of Sanchez after Johan was great. IMO that was much worse.
And they did come back and win the next two in that series. So I’m sure after that game there was all sorts of talk about “Phillies Momentum”. They just need to win tonight.