The Phillies beat the Mets 3:0 in the regular season on Wednesday night. We had backed the home side with 55 per cent confidence, but the match went another way entirely. and here's the thing — you don't need much to see why.
The Mets had lost four of their last five games before this one. They'd been hammered 7:1 by the Orioles, then lost again to them, before dropping to the Yankees. The runs piled up against them. The Phillies, meanwhile, had won their last outing 3:0 against the Nationals and were coming off a 9:4 victory over the Braves.
Three runs separated the sides. That's not a lot, but when you're not scoring at all, even one run becomes a mountain. to be fair, the Mets did have their moment against the Yankees in that 12:2 win, but form like this doesn't recover overnight. You can't bank on a single good game to fix five bad ones.
The scoreboard tells you everything. The Mets didn't cross the plate once while the Phillies found the net three times. That's the sort of result that makes you look at the wider picture — the Mets were already in trouble before the game started, and this just added to it.
By then the prediction was already history. We said the home side, but the data from their last few matches told a different story. Three runs. Zero for the Mets. The gap widens.
