Phillies look like their old selves as the Mets rock Aaron Nola, 7-2

There have been a few times this season when the Phillies have miraculously won a game that in previous years they wouldn’t have won, prompting fans to suggest that this 2022 Phillies team is different.

Friday’s 7-2 loss to the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park was not one of those games. It was a game full of tired tropes that defined Phillies teams of years past — namely bad defense and Aaron Nola struggling to pitch with two strikes— and one trope that has defined them at times this season: a failure to score with runners in scoring position.

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We caught a brief glimpse of the 2022 Phillies in the fifth inning. With runners on second and third and no outs, Kyle Schwarber hit a two-run single to right field. Rhys Hoskins grounded into a force out, and sprinted to first base as if a World Series depended on him being safe. In the next at-bat, Alec Bohm showed the same hustle, again, on a force out, and was narrowly called safe. J.T. Realmuto singled to move Bohm to third with two outs, but Nick Castellanos hit a pop fly to center field and the inning was over.

The Phillies wouldn’t score any more runs after that. Mets starter Chris Bassitt held them to seven hits and two earned runs, with two hit batsmen and no walks. The Phillies have faced Bassitt three times this season, and have struggled in all three.

“He’s a savvy guy, right,” Schwarber said of Bassitt. “Good fastball, good cutter, obviously a couple of different breaking balls with the way he shapes them differently, and he can add and subtract. It’s a guy that you just kind of have to lock in to, and when you get a pitch in the zone, you don’t really want to miss.

“It’s a tough at-bat whenever you’re in two strikes off of him, just because there are so many different possibilities that he can do. So, I don’t think if you talk to any hitter in the league that they want to hit with two strikes, the odds are stacked against us, we’re not trying to get to two strikes. It’s just one of those things where we just have to get him early and get him in the zone and try to work him. We do a good job working his pitch count, we get his pitch count up there, and he just kind of wiggles his way out of the guys in scoring position. Tip your cap to him.”

The Mets tacked on two more runs in the seventh inning, with a two-run single to right field by rookie Brett Baty off Andrew Bellatti. The Phillies are now 65-53.

Part of what has made Nola’s 2022 season so impressive is that he has shed many of the tropes that used to define him. In 2021, batters were hitting .186/.216/.311 off of him with two strikes; in 2022, they are hitting .152/.185/.253. He has stepped up in big moments, like his last start, on Aug. 13 in New York against the Mets, when he allowed just one earned run over eight innings pitched in front of a packed house.

But on Friday night, Nola looked like the Nola of old. He was backed up by some poor defense (more on that in a moment), which certainly didn’t help him, but he also allowed five earned runs on two strikes and allowed the Mets’ lineup to work him deep into counts. He finished his night at 104 pitches and 75 strikes through five innings. He allowed eight hits, five earned runs, one walk and one home run, striking out nine.

“Those guys are tough,” he said. “They see a lot of pitches. I’ve had my good games against them, I’ve had my not good games. They see a lot of pitches. I think I threw 20 some pitches to McNeil, that’s when you know he’s going pretty good, when he’s fouling them off. I didn’t really make the greatest pitches when guys were on base. I think that hurt me today. Other than that, I felt pretty good. I felt like I was attacking guys. But when those guys got on base today, I didn’t make good pitches.”

Friday’s game technically had only one error — a faulty throw by third baseman Bohm to second base in the fifth — but it was full of other defensive misplays. Matt Vierling looked lost in left field, making two bad reads that resulted in two Starling Marte doubles, one in the third and the other in the fifth.

A few at-bats after the second Marte double, with Marte on third base and Francisco Lindor on first base, Lindor stole second and Marte stole home. Shortstop Bryson Stott’s throw home was wide, which allowed Marte to score.

The defensive highlight of the night was a diving catch made by center fielder Bradley Zimmer in his first game as a Phillie, but aside from that, it was pretty ugly.