The month of August couldn't be going much more differently for the Phillies and Mets as it is right now, and the three-game series that the longtime rivals played against each other this past weekend was a nice way to keep the teams' respective trends going.
The Phillies won all three games, extending their win streak to eight games. The offense came through in key moments and was fairly consistent across all three, extending their performance throughout the beginning of the month as one of the top batting teams in the league. Since August 1, the Phils boast the third highest OPS in baseball (.901), slashing a ridiculous .289/.347/.554 as a team. Only the Rockies have scored more runs than the Phillies' 55 in that stretch.
The Mets lost all three games (obviously), making their August record a disappointing 1-7 and moving them out of first place. They scored only five runs total, which gave them a total of 20 scored to this point in the month — only the lowly Texas Rangers have fewer — and contributed to their miserable .179/.274/.305 slash line over those eight games. Some will say it's just a really unlucky stretch, and that's not the most ridiculous argument in the world.
Related
But some will chalk the Mets' struggles up to something more: the fact that the offense is just really, really, really bad right now. You can count longtime former Phillie (and brief Met!) Larry Bowa among those with that view.
"The Mets, their offense is horrific," Bowa said on the "Unleashed with Mitch Williams" podcast. "I've never seen that bad an offense since I've been watching baseball, playing baseball. It's terrible.
"When the manager puts in the paper after the second game that we have trouble hitting a fastball... most of the time, no matter how hard a guy throws — even if he has good sink like Wheeler does — guys are gonna catch up to a fastball. They're gonna start looking center-in in certain counts or looking for a four-seamer up. And most big-league hitters — I'm not saying they're gonna get a hit — [but] they're gonna put it in play."
That wasn't really the case this past weekend, and that's obviously not a good thing for the Mets. Hitting a baseball may be the hardest thing to do in sports, at least in Ted Williams' view, but catching up to a fastball, especially when it's the expected pitch, shouldn't be that tall an order for a professional ballplayer.
Now, are the 2021 Mets truly the worst offensive team that Bowa has ever seen? We could look for others — Bowa's 1972 Phillies were pretty darn weak, with only 21-year-old Greg Luzinski posting an OPS over .750 — but for now, his point is well taken.
The Phils and Mets don't meet again until mid-September, and it's anyone's guess as to what the standings will look like at that point. Should the NL East be a tight race at that point, that series will be even more important than the one we just went through.
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow Audacy Sports
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram