Mets set to play two against Phillies in London (2024)

When the regular season began, Major League Baseball likely envisioned that its showcase series in London would feature two teams that were slightly closer in the standings than the Mets (27-35) and Phillies (44-19) are right now.

While projections had the Phillies finishing ahead of the Mets, Philadelphia has gone above and beyond and currently owns the second-best record in baseball and the best record in the National League. And the Mets weren’t projected to be one of the elite teams in baseball, but they’ve come up short of their .500-ish projection so far and have quite a bit of work to do to get back into any kind of playoff mix.

Fortunately, the Mets have played one of their best stretches of the 2024 season over the past seven games, as they splits a four-game series with the Diamondbacks at home before sweeping the Nationals on the road for a 5-2 record over that span. The Mets were supposed to be better than the Nationals coming into the season, but those wins were anything but a given when the series started on Monday evening.

Since the start of their series against Arizona, the Mets have been the best-hitting team in baseball with a .317/.368/.557 collective line and a 164 wRC+. It’s just one week of stats, but given the way the lineup had been struggling to score over long stretches of the first two months of the season, it’s nice to see that it’s capable of better.

In those seven games, several regulars have been on fire. Francisco Lindor (244 wRC+), Starling Marte (217 wRC+), J.D. Martinez (198 wRC+), Mark Vientos (198 wRC+), Pete Alonso, (192 wRC+), and Jose Iglesias (156 wRC+) have logged the majority of the team’s plate appearances. And part-time players like new catcher Luis Torrens (274 wRC+) and Tyrone Taylor (180 wRC+) have been significant contributors, too.

Jeff McNeil seems to be firmly planted on the bench, especially as Iglesias has gotten off to such a hot start after the Mets called him up amid a necessary bunch of moves to shake the roster up. It’ll be interesting to see if he gets into either one of the London games this weekend. Whether or not Starling Marte, who experienced some knee discomfort that saw him miss the Mets’ series finale in Washington D.C., plays this weekend could factor into McNeil’s opportunities.

The Phillies head into this brief series pretty hot, too, as they rattled off six wins in their last seven games, having taken two of three from the Cardinals before sweeping the Brewers in a three-game series. The first of those six wins came in a series finale in San Francisco after the Phillies dropped the first two games. And that road trip also saw them drop two of three to the Rockies.

At home, the Phillies have been exceptional this year, as they currently sport at 27-9 record at Citizens Bank Park. They’ve still been a very good team on the road, but their 17-10 record away from home looks slightly less intimidating. Maybe it’s good that the Mets are catching them at a neutral site.

Among qualified hitters, Bryce Harper is leading the way among Phillies players with a 147 wRC+. Alec Bohm (130 wRC+) and Kyle Schwarber (116 wRC+) are the second- and third-best hitters by that metric. Lowering the qualification bar to just a minimum of 100 plate appearances, Edmundo Sosa (152 wRC+) leads the way, and two players who are on the injured list had been hitting really well but will not play in this series: Trea Turner (145 wRC+) and Brandon Marsh (120 wRC+).

But the Phillies’ offense has seemingly been better than the sum of its parts, as the team has averaged 5.08 runs scored per game—the second-best rate in baseball, just two hundredths of a run behind the Orioles for the top mark.

Philadelphia has also excelled when it comes to run prevention, as the team’s 3.43 runs allowed per game also ranks second. Only the Yankees at 3.17 runs allowed per game have been better. Phillies starting pitchers have a 2.64 ERA, the best rate in baseball. Their bullpen, which at times has plagued them over the past several years, has been better than average with a respectable 3.50 ERA.

Had this series happened a week earlier, two Mets losses would’ve felt like a lock. Winning one of the two games will be a challenge, and winning both still seems like it would be a monumental task. It’s nice that it feels like the Mets at least have a chance to split the series, though, and if they do, they can go into a much easier stretch of their schedule with continued hope of climbing out of the deep hole they dug themselves in April and May.

Saturday, June 8: Sean Manaea vs. Ranger Suárez at 1:10 PM EDT on FOX

Manaea (2024): 57.0 IP, 57 K, 24 BB, 4 HR, 3.63 ERA, 3.41 FIP, 95 ERA-

Having started the season looking very good, Manaea has been slowly regressing to being a roughly-league-average starting pitcher lately. That’s not a bad outcome, and there’s still plenty to like about what he’s shown as a Met so far. Even with his bad start last time out, he has a 3.86 ERA over his past six starts, and the strikeout, walk, and home run rates over that span have been pretty decent.

Suárez (2024): 74.0 IP, 79 K, 16 BB, 5 HR, 1.70 ERA, 2.65 FIP, 42 ERA-

The Phillies avoided bad news after Suárez was hit on his pitching hand by a hard line drive that forced him out of his last start early but will be ready for his start against the Mets in the first game of this series. Simply put, he’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball so far this year. Among qualified starters, Suárez leads baseball in ERA, and he ranks sixth overall in FIP. Coming off a combined 2022-2023 stretch that saw him put up a 3.88 ERA in 280.1 innings, he’s taken a big step forward to start this season.

Sunday, June 9: Jose Quintana vs. Taijuan Walker at 10:10 AM EDT on ESPN

Quintana (2024): 62.2 IP, 43 K, 21 BB, 11 HR, 5.17 ERA, 5.24 FIP, 136 ERA-

If the Mets are to continue inching toward Wild Card relevancy, giving more and more starts to Quintana could be a pretty frustrating experience. As good as he was after returning from injury in the second half last season, Quintana has really struggled in twelve starts this year. He’s given up more than twice as many home runs as he did in 2023, and he hasn’t even matched his innings pitched total from last year yet. In the five starts he’s made since his truly awful one in Tampa, he’s still struggled, as he has a 5.13 ERA in those 26.1 innings of work. Among 73 qualified starting pitchers, Quintana’s ERA ranks 68th in baseball.

Walker (2024): 37.2 IP, 30 K, 15 BB, 8 HR, 5.73 ERA, 5.65 FIP, 143 ERA-

The silver lining in the second game of the series is that Walker has struggled even more than Quintana in the early going this year. The former Met has made just seven starts, and over his past four starts, he has a 6.63 ERA and has averaged fewer than five innings per start. After joining the Phillies in free agency ahead of the 2023 season, Walker got off to a great start last year but finished with a 4.38 ERA in 172.2 innings of work—a career high in innings and his third year in a row throwing at least 157.1 innings in a single season.