MLB Baseball: Philadelphia Phillies at New York Mets
The New York Mets are on the verge of running away with the NL East. The only team within single digit games is the Washington Nationals but they haven’t shown much urgency in their bid to run down the NL East leaders. Washington is just 6-4 in their last 10 games which won’t get it done with the Mets posting a 7-3 record in their last 10. The Mets lost yesterday but have a stretch of six NL East road games coming up–three at bottom feeding Miami and three at Washington. New York hasn’t been a great road team this season (29-35) but they have improved in the second half. Meanwhile, Washington is trying to prevent being swept by the St. Louis Cardinals tonight. The Nats catch a break with four games against the freefalling Atlanta Braves up next. Of course if Atlanta has any fight left at all they’d love to throw a monkey wrench into the postseason plans of their longtime rivals.
Philadelphia has much more modest goals–they’re trying to avoid finishing last in the NL East, the National League and–for that matter–all of Major League Baseball. The Phillies currently have 53 wins on the season but they’ve got plenty of company among National League teams–the Colorado Rockies (53 wins), Cincinnati Reds (55 wins), Milwaukee Brewers (56 wins), Atlanta Braves (54 wins) and Miami Marlins (55 wins) are all in the mix for the ‘worst team in baseball’ superlative. Philadelphia has shown some fight in the second half of the season so there’s at least some reason to think they have a nominal interest in playing well down the stretch.
The Mets have dominated the Phillies this season with a 13-2 +9.6 unit recording including a 7-1 mark at home. Making matters worse for Philadelphia, they face ace Matt Harvey tonight. Harvey has been nearly unhittable in his last three starts but that hasn’t done the Mets any good–they’ve managed to lose two of Harvey’s last three starts. With Harvey allowing 1 earned run and 13 hits in 20 innings of work for a 0.45 L3 ERA it almost defies rational thought that the Mets could come out of that with a losing record.
We’ll take a shot on the Phillies at a big price.
BET PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES +225 OVER NEW YORK METS
