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<\/p>\nNEW YORK \u2014 Not long after the Phillies held the door open for another 2 hours and 13 minutes of baseball, Rob Thomson stood inside the visitors clubhouse at Citi Field and spoke to his team. He didn\u2019t have to yell; multiple Phillies players described Thomson\u2019s tone as direct and not panicked. The National League East is a race again because the New York Mets trimmed three games in three days.<\/p>\n
Someone had to say something.<\/p>\n
Thomson urged his players not to let the sting of this sweep linger because, if they do, the consequences are real. There is a chance the Phillies will not step foot inside this building again in 2025. If they can protect a four-game lead over the final 29 games, the likeliest scenario is they will host the Mets in a three-game Wild Card Series. If the Phillies secure a first-round bye as the No. 2 seed and the Mets are the sixth seed, the earliest they could meet is the National League Championship Series, and the Phillies will be happy to return to Citi Field if that\u2019s the case.<\/p>\n
So there was one thing Thomson was emphatic about with his team after the 6-0 defeat: He\u2019s tired of the Citi Field stuff. Forget this place. Forget these last three days. Forget whatever excuses there are.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that we need to play better,\u201d Thomson said in his office to reporters. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s one of those series. We\u2019ll just have to flush it and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the typical baseball adages did not apply to Wednesday\u2019s game; this one had more meaning than others. The Mets clinched the season series with the victory, which earned them the tiebreaker over the Phillies for the division. Functionally, any lead the Phillies have for the remainder of the season is one game less than what the standings show.<\/p>\n
For now, all the Phillies have done is make this more difficult. (An annual rite of passage.) They came here with a 91 percent chance of winning the division, according to FanGraphs\u2019 projections model. It\u2019s now a 75 percent chance. The odds are in their favor. So is the schedule.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rob Thomson, pictured on Aug. 14, addressed his players after Wednesday\u2019s loss and told them to forget this sweep at Citi Field. (Jess Rapfogel \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The Phillies have lost 10 straight at Citi Field (including postseason) and are 4-16 here since the beginning of the 2023 season. But they are 12-5 at Citizens Bank Park against the Mets in the same period. The teams will meet again Sept. 8-11 for a four-game series. Seventeen of the Phillies\u2019 final 29 games are at home, and only three teams in baseball have a higher winning percentage at home than the Phillies.<\/p>\n
None of this absolves three nightmarish days at Citi Field. The Mets look energized. Did the Phillies awaken them?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Thomson said. \u201cYou\u2019ll have to ask them.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one has any idea about anything in this sport. A week ago Wednesday, the Phillies had completed one of their best three-game series in years against a contending Seattle Mariners club that was reeling. The Mariners have since won four of six games, while the Phillies did whatever it was they did in New York.<\/p>\n
The final knife to the back came in the eighth inning. The game had long been decided, but the Phillies put two runners on base for the first time all night when Alec Bohm and Max Kepler singled. Bohm stood on third. Nick Castellanos hit a lazy fly ball to right field, not deep enough for Bohm to score. Bryson Stott followed with a fly ball to left field that was a little deeper. Bohm tagged up. He took a few steps toward home plate before third-base coach Dusty Wathan held him. Bohm probably wouldn\u2019t have made it. Maybe he would have. Harrison Bader grounded out to end the inning.<\/p>\n
The Citi Field crowd erupted for Nolan McLean, the prized rookie right-hander who authored eight shutout innings. The Phillies wallowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tough place to play,\u201d Mets infielder Jeff McNeil said. \u201cWe put some runs up, the fans bring the energy and this place gets loud.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Nolan McLean throws out Harrison Bader to end the eighth. The rookie righty allowed four hits and no walks in eight scoreless innings. (Kent J. Edwards \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
No team looks happy or confident when things are not going its way, and the reaction to this series will include questions about the Phillies\u2019 poise. They spent months last season looking like something was amiss; three days of sleepwalking during the most pivotal series (to date) of the season will conjure those memories.<\/p>\n
The Phillies need their leaders to lead. It\u2019s one thing to have the manager address them, but this is a veteran group that must generate motivation from within the clubhouse. The Phillies coasted in August and September of 2024, and it bled into October. That cannot happen again because last year\u2019s team never led the division by fewer than five games after May 18.<\/p>\n
This is a wake-up call.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s disappointment, right?\u201d Kyle Schwarber said. \u201cWho likes to lose? No one likes to lose. But there\u2019s nothing that can really faze us. We\u2019ve been swept before this year. We bounce back. So we have to do the same thing. And I\u2019m not worried about it. I know everyone\u2019s going to have the right mindset going into the next series. And we go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe the idea of avoiding this place again serves as a rallying point. It\u2019s human nature to have doubt after what happened here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any doubt at all,\u201d said Taijuan Walker, who allowed four runs in five innings. \u201cI mean, we know that we\u2019re a good team. We\u2019ve proved it all year. It\u2019s just baseball. It\u2019s a long season. We\u2019re going to have bad series. Just try to minimize them and flush them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be able to walk out of the clubhouse,\u201d Schwarber said, \u201cexpecting to win a game.\u201d<\/p>\n
These Phillies don\u2019t need Thomson to tell them that. He did anyway. Whether the message resonated depends on the next day\u2019s starting pitcher and lineup. And the day after that. And so on. The Phillies have proven they\u2019re good, but no one will believe they are great until they accomplish something in October. It\u2019s always been that way. Nothing about this week changes that.<\/p>\n
They have just made it harder now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one series,\u201d Thomson said. \u201cAnd I know it\u2019s against the Mets, and admittedly so, we need to play better. But we will. We got a good club. And that\u2019s not going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Top photo of Mark Vientos and Brandon Nimmo celebrating after Vientos\u2019 seventh-inning home run: Kent J. Edwards \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 Not long after the Phillies held the door open for another 2 hours and 13…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":182409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1266,2083,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-182408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115106403376246983","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}