The Philadelphia Phillies took care of business during the regular season, racking up 95 wins, the second-best mark in MLB. As a result, they won the NL East by six games and earned the number two seed and a first-round bye in the playoffs.
The New York Mets were three games over .500 for the first half of the season. Then they caught fire in August and finished strong to tie the Atlanta Braves for second in the NL East and earn a wild card spot. The Milwaukee Brewers were favored, but the Mets took the first game and notched the dramatic Game 3 victory when Pete Alonso hit a three-run home run in the ninth inning.
Now New York faces Philadelphia in the NLDS.
DK Sportsbook has the Phillies at -185 to win the series.
During the regular season, the teams played 13 games with the Phillies coming out on top, 7-6.
The Phillies have the better starting pitching with Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Christopher Sanchez compared to Luis Severino, Sean Manaea and Jose Quintana. And the team with the better starters usually advances. But it’s baseball and anything can happen in a small sample size of potentially seven games.
For example, Wheeler is the ace of the Phillies staff and he faced the Mets once during the regular season. While he pitched well, going seven innings, striking out eight and allowing only two earned runs, he took the loss as the Phillies could only muster one run on that night.
Breaking down the two offenses, the teams were 15th and 17th in strikeout rate. Philadelphia was fifth in OPS while the Mets were ninth during the regular season, but the teams were seventh and eighth in ISO.
In terms of starting pitching, the Mets staff actually had a higher K/9 of 9.09, which was fifth-best in MLB, compared to 8.94 for the Phillies, good for eighth. In terms of FIP, though, the Phillies had the eighth-best mark at 3.86 while the Mets ended with a 4.05 number, 17th-best.
The bullpens were very similar with the Phillies posting a 3.83 FIP and the Mets at 3.86.
The Phillies are better on paper and have the playoff experience, having lost in the NLCS last season and the World Series the year before. This is only the third time since 2016 that the Mets have made the playoffs. That said, they are hot and intimately familiar with this Phillies team. Philadelphia is rightfully the favorite in the NLDS, but it’s well within the range of outcomes that the Mets advance.
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