The Mets Made The Phillies Look Like The Mets

The New York Mets are the greatest baseball team of the past two days. Following up on a 16-5 drubbing of the Orioles on Wednesday night, one of the biggest laughingstocks in baseball took down the Phillies this afternoon by a staggeringly competent score of 24-4. Those 24 runs today are a Mets franchise record.

The Phillies, meanwhile, paid tribute to the slapstick Mets we all remember from, uh, last week, by running down some of their greatest hits. Were there throwing errors? Reader, there were throwing errors, part of four total miscues by the Phillies that led to eleven(!) unearned runs.

Did some barely noticeable screw-up—in this case a balk—gift the Phillies’ opponents a run? You bet your ass.

And did a dude get conked in the head with a ball on a routine play? Absolutely, Rhys Hoskins did.

Jose Bautista, who didn’t even enter the game until replacing an injured Brandon Nimmo in the third inning, got the biggest hit of the day in the fifth, smashing a grand slam to left that opened up a 15-4 Mets lead. It was Bautista’s second hit during an inning in which the Mets scored 10 runs.

The game was a farce long before the eighth, but the final joke was delivered by New York reliever Jerry Blevins, who earned the first hit of his 12-year career on an absolute meatball from position player pitcher Scott Kingery. In his 1.1 innings today, Kingery threw the ball so slowly that the stadium radar gun couldn’t even pick it up.

This is just Game 1 of a doubleheader.