“Elective ignorance was a great survival skill, perhaps the greatest.”
—“The Corrections,” Jonathan Franzen

The Mets’ biggest series of the season starts Monday when they host the Phillies. New York is seven out in the National League East, and any sliver of a shot at claiming the division depends on winning and likely sweeping this series.

(If you can bear it, the 2007 Phillies were six out the week before Labor Day, with seven games to go against the first-place Mets. They swept all seven to win the division by a game. As much as we think of that collapse as comprehensive, it’s basically broken into the seven losses to Philadelphia and the 1-6 record in the final week.)

Heading into that series, let’s dive into two trends that have emerged with these Mets — ones that feel relevant right now and in their matchup with the Phillies.

19-17

The Mets struggle against left-handed pitching, and it remains pronounced. Only four teams this season have a wider gap between their performance against righties versus lefties than the Mets. And only two teams in Mets’ history have a wider gap than this year’s squad.

This is a league-wide trend, as Stephen Nesbitt explored earlier this week. Lefties around the league are dominating, especially against right-handed hitters. That’s been really pronounced for the Mets, whose right-handed or switch hitters (outside of Starling Marte) have performed well below career norms against lefties.

Mets’ RHB v. LHP

Player

  

Through 2024

  

2025

  

0.847

0.776

0.825

0.662

0.773

0.772

0.751

0.699

0.696

0.482

The Mets are scoring nearly half a run per game less against left-handed starters than they are against right-handed starters.

And yet, this floored me when I discovered it moments before typing it: The Mets’ 19-17 record against left-handed starters is the second-best in the National League. The Mets play at an 85 1/2-win pace against lefties — and an 86-win pace against righties.

Milwaukee is 27-14 against southpaws, and the rest of the NL is 69 games under .500 against them. (Colorado’s 5-30 record is rough.) After the Brewers, the Mets and Padres are two over .500, and Atlanta is one game over against lefties.

There is no logical explanation for this discrepancy. Maybe the Mets piled up low-scoring wins against southpaws early in the season, when their pitching was leading the league in ERA; New York has been 5-5, 10-10 and 13-13 against lefties this year. The win/loss distribution has been pretty even.

The Mets are better against lefties with runners in scoring position and in high leverage, but not by so much that it obviously explains this disconnect. So I’m left shrugging.

Why does this matter? You see it with Philadelphia this week. The Phillies are one of three teams most likely to match up with the Mets in the wild-card series, should New York get there. In that series, Philadelphia will be throwing at least two left-handers and possibly three, depending on whether Aaron Nola looks better than Jesús Luzardo or Ranger Suárez by then.

The Dodgers and Padres are the two other likeliest potential matchups. Los Angeles has Blake Snell in the rotation and a quartet of lefty relievers. San Diego is unlikely to start a lefty in a three-game series, but it can maximize Adrian Morejon (as it did against the Mets last month) in a short series.

The Mets themselves are only 15-18 when they start a left-hander, with their 1-7 record in Sean Manaea’s starts weighing them down.

.697

I’ve also talked about the split in the Mets’ order between the every-day-it’s-pretty-much-the-same top half and the anything-goes bottom half. But we haven’t yet discussed how that split works for the Mets’ pitching staff.

In Sunday’s eighth inning, Gregory Soto hit Vidal Bruján with a slider to bring the top of the Atlanta order back to the plate with the bases loaded. Jurickson Profar, one of the sport’s hottest hitters of late, singled in the go-ahead runs to essentially win the game. You probably thought, recalling what happened in the last series with Atlanta, that no team in baseball is worse at handling No. 9 hitters than the Mets.

You’d be wrong, because a few last-place teams (and the Rays) handle ninth-place hitters worse. But the Mets rank 25th in the league against No. 9 hitters — just as they do against No. 7 hitters and one spot ahead of their rank against No. 6 hitters. (It’s not all bad: The Mets are the best in baseball at limiting production from No. 8 hitters, perhaps in tribute to Rey Ordoñez. That didn’t work Sunday against Sean Murphy.)

Ninth hitters entered Sunday with a .697 OPS against the Mets; No. 4 hitters entered Sunday with a .647 OPS against the Mets. That’s right, No. 9 hitters are easily outperforming cleanup hitters against New York.

In fact, the Mets are generally handling the top halves of opposing orders quite well. They rank second against No. 4 hitters, fourth against No. 5 hitters and fifth against No. 3 hitters, and if that sentence is confusing, it can be reduced to: The Mets rank in the top five in suppressing production from the middle of the opposing order.

But they’re not taking care of business against the bottom half, and that’s mitigated that remarkable success against the best hitters, as it did on Sunday. Succeeding in the postseason is often predicated on properly navigating opposing lineups — on ensuring the most dangerous players are seldom in position to break the game open. The Mets did that in the NLDS, dominating the lower half of the Phillies’ order. They did not in the NLCS against Los Angeles, and they allowed more runs than any team ever had in a National League postseason series.

The exposition

The Mets couldn’t complete a sweep of Atlanta on Sunday, leaving them 3-3 on their road trip to the bottom two teams in the division. New York’s 69-61 record has it seven behind first-place Philadelphia and 1 1/2 ahead of Cincinnati for the last wild card spot.

The Phillies took two of three from the Nationals after sweeping the Mariners earlier in the week, picking up two games on the Mets over the course of the seven days. At 76-54, Philadelphia is 2 1/2 games clear of the NL West leader for a first-round bye.

The Marlins salvaged Sunday’s finale from the Blue Jays to avoid a sweep. It’s been a rough stretch for Miami, which, after rebounding all the way to .500 by sweeping the Yankees to start August, has lost six consecutive series and gone 6-14. That’s a missed opportunity to be a legitimate hanger-on in the wild-card race. Instead, the Marlins are eight back. They host Atlanta for three starting Monday.

The pitching possibles

v. Philadelphia

RHP Kodai Senga (7-5, 2.58 ERA) v. LHP Cristopher Sánchez (11-4, 2.46 ERA)
LHP Sean Manaea (1-2, 5.15) v. LHP Jesús Luzardo (12-6, 4.10)
RHP Nolan McLean (2-0, 1.46) v. RHP Taijuan Walker (4-6, 3.44)

v. Miami

RHP Clay Holmes (11-6, 3.60) v. Janson Junk (6-2, 4.09)
TBD v. RHP Eury Pérez (6-3, 3.44)
LHP David Peterson (8-5, 3.18) v. RHP Edward Cabrera (6-7, 3.52)
RHP Kodai Senga v. RHP Sandy Alcantara (7-11, 6.04)

TBD, eh?

Since I reported that the Mets hoped to get to September before bringing in a sixth starter, they’ve placed Frankie Montas on the IL and had Brandon Sproat pitch as a bulk guy in Triple A. The first points to New York adding a sixth starter before Sept. 1, and the latter suggests Jonah Tong could be the guy ahead of Sproat. Tylor Megill is still an option. He pitched Friday for Triple-A Syracuse.

Slotting that pitcher in Friday ahead of Peterson gives him and Senga an extra day to prevent consecutive starts on regular rest.

Injury updates

Mets’ injured list

Player

  

Injury

  

Elig.

  

ETA

  

UCL sprain in right thumb

Aug. 28

September

Lower back inflammation

Sept. 9

September

Right elbow sprain

Now

September

Fractured left tibia

Now

September

Ruptured left Achilles tendon

Aug. 26

2026

Left lat strain

Now

2026

Tommy John surgery

Now

2026

Elbow surgery

Now

2026

Tommy John surgery

Now

2026

Tommy John surgery

Now

2026

Left shoulder fracture

Now

2026

Tommy John surgery

Sept. 1

2027

Right elbow UCL injury

Sept. 1

2027

Red = 60-day IL
Orange = 15-day IL
Blue = 10-day IL

Francisco Alvarez will be re-evaluated this week after the inflammation in his right thumb has sufficiently subsided to see if he can go on a rehab assignment and actually swing the bat despite the torn ligament in that thumb. Players have played through that injury before; they don’t remember the experience fondly.
Things escalated quickly for Frankie Montas, who has a “significant” UCL injury that sounds like it’s headed for surgery that would jeopardize the entirety of his 2026 season. Montas’ trip to the IL simplifies some roster machinations for this year’s Mets, but losing him as even an option for 2026 or modest eat-most-of-the-money trade bait this winter would hurt.
Jose Siri should begin a rehab assignment this week, which would make him an option for the big-league club in mid-September.
Jesse Winker still hasn’t started baseball activities. It’s getting tougher to envision a return for Winker this season.
Minor-league schedule

Triple A: Syracuse at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (New York, AL)
Double A: Binghamton v. Somerset (New York, AL)
High A: Brooklyn v. Hudson Valley (New York, AL)
Low A: St. Lucie v. Lakeland (Detroit)

Scoreboard watching

Philadelphia (76-54): at New York (NL)3, v. Atlanta4
Cincinnati (68-63): at Los Angeles (NL)3, v. St. Louis3

A note on the epigraph

I haven’t liked much of Franzen’s work outside of “The Corrections,” but I love “The Corrections.”

Trivia time

Since the introduction of the wild card in 1995, who is the best team (by regular-season record) to miss the postseason? It was extremely relevant to the Mets that year.

(I’ll reply to the correct answer in the comments.)

(Photo: John David Mercer / Getty Images)