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Another rough night at Citi Field to begin Phillies' season series with Mets originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

NEW YORK — The fifth pitch of Aaron Nola’s night was a low-and-in curveball to one of Francisco Lindor’s nitro zones, it traveled 376 feet over the wall in right field and so began the Phillies’ 2025 season series with the Mets.

The Phils were sent home last October on this same field in Flushing, and the Mets again looked like the superior team on Monday night. The final score was a 5-4 loss but the Mets entered the ninth with a five-run lead and tried to get middle reliever Max Kranick through a third inning when the Phillies finally came through with a few knocks. It was too little, too late.

Nola served up leadoff home runs in each of the first two innings while Mets right-hander Tylor Megill stifled the Phils’ offense for the sixth consecutive time.

Megill retired eight of nine the first trip through the order, striking out five, before the Phillies put some solid plate appearances on him in the third inning. They loaded the bases on a Bryson Stott single and back-to-back two-out walks from Trea Turner and Bryce Harper. Kyle Schwarber expanded the zone, though, to strike out on a down-and-away changeup.

Not capitalizing on that opportunity hurt because the Phillies’ chances to touch Megill have always been sparse. He’s dominated them in six starts dating back to 2022 with a 1.36 ERA. The Phillies have hit .149 and homered once in 124 plate appearances against him.

The Phillies are 13-10, three games behind the Mets in the NL East. They’re 20-30 in their last 50 games against the Mets, who played them tough even before they started spending freely under owner Steve Cohen. This looks like a much better club than even the one that defeated the Phillies in the 2024 NLDS with the additions of Juan Soto and Clay Holmes, a healthy Kodai Senga and the most productive start of Pete Alonso’s career.

It was obviously just one early-season game and the teams will meet at least 12 more times, but Monday was a continuation of a couple of concerning trends. The Phils are going to need to hit Megill at some point. His career ERA entering the night was 4.39.

Nola was slightly better than he’d been previously and two of the runs he was charged with were inherited by Jose Ruiz, but he continues to struggle with the home run ball, pitch with diminished velocity and put more traffic on the basepaths than usual. Though he’s had trouble in the past keeping the ball in the park, Nola has always maintained low walk rates and low opposing batting averages, which has resulted in many of the home runs being solos.

Nola has been more hittable than ever before, though, with a .301 opponents’ batting average compared to .233 for his career. He’s also walked 10 batters over his last three starts. Nola said after his most recent outing against the Giants that he hasn’t felt like himself from the stretch this season, and he’s spent quite a bit of time in the stretch, putting the leadoff man on base in nine of his last 18 innings. He is 0-5 with a 6.43 ERA.

Once again, though, it wouldn’t have mattered much if Nola pitched a gem. The Phillies have scored a grand total of five runs for him in his five starts.

They’ll look to even the series Tuesday night behind Cristopher Sanchez, whose last outing was one of the most impressive by a Phillie in recent memory. He’ll need to keep it up.

What we learned as Flores, Lee deliver in Giants' win vs. Brewers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

BOX SCORE

SAN FRANCISCO — The reward for playing 10 games in three cities over 10 days and traveling from the East Coast to Anaheim without a day off, or even a 1 p.m. game on getaway day in Philadelphia? For the Giants, it was another night of baseball.

They returned to San Francisco on Monday night and began a seven-game homestand against two teams — the Milwaukee Brewers and Texas Rangers — with postseason aspirations, and once again, they responded to the challenge. Wilmer Flores hit a go-ahead blast and Hayden Birdsong provided a huge boost to a tired bullpen as the Giants won 5-2 on their first night back at Oracle Park. They’re now 6-5 during this marathon stretch and 15-8 on the 2025 MLB season.

WILMER FOR THE LEAD 💥 pic.twitter.com/Wb2EMaQEmL

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 22, 2025

The Giants took the lead in the sixth when Flores crushed a middle-middle sinker from Grant Anderson. An inning later, their best player early on tacked on an insurance run. With Willy Adames on first, Jung Hoo Lee smoked a line drive into the gap in right-center and cruised into third for his second triple of the season.

Jung Hoo Lee delivers with an RBI triple ‼ pic.twitter.com/yQSBHp7ZDN

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 22, 2025

The Giants trailed early but caught up in the fifth, with a little help from the Brewers. Tyler Fitzgerald reached on his second infield single and moved along to second on a walk of Mike Yastrzemski that ended Quinn Priester’s night. Right-hander Nick Mears entered to face Adames and got a potential double-play ball to third, but Adames beat out the throw to first, which clanked off Rhys Hoskins’ glove. That allowed Fitzgerald to walk home for the tying run.

All tied up 😅 pic.twitter.com/1zCW5MrRb7

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 22, 2025

With Ryan Walker unavailable after going back-to-back games in Anaheim, Giants manager Bob Melvin figured he would have to get creative if he had a lead late in the game. Birdsong ended up providing a relatively smooth path, throwing three dominant innings out of the bullpen to get the ball to Camilo Doval, who went 1-2-3 for his third save. 

Flo Show

It’s been an odd month for Flores. His photo is constantly on graphics representing the league leaders in home runs and RBI, but he entered Monday’s game with an fWAR of 0.0 and a wRC+ that put him 10 points below league-average as a hitter. Flores isn’t drawing walks, is one of the slowest players in baseball, and doesn’t play defense — but the Giants don’t care about the advanced metrics at all right now. 

From a more traditional standpoint, Flores is off to a huge start. The only player in the NL with more homers is Fernando Tatis Jr., and Aaron Judge and Spencer Torkelson are the only other big leaguers with at least seven homers and 20 RBI. With the go-ahead homer, Flores moved into a tie with Pete Alonso for the league lead in runs driven in. 

The Giants talked all spring of the importance of having more “RBI guys.” Nobody is doing it better than Flores right now, and that has made it pretty easy to push all the other numbers to the side. 

Establish It

Robbie Ray has had to grind through his starts this season, and this one was no exception. Ray was at 64 pitches through three innings and had only one clean inning on the night, but he allowed just two runs. They came on a pitch that was pretty predictable by that point of the second inning. 

Of Ray’s first 41 pitches, 37 were four-seamers, including an elevated fastball that No. 9 hitter Caleb Durbin smacked out to left for his first big league homer. Ray mixed in a lot more sliders and changeups the second and third times through the order, but he paid for being fastball-heavy in the first couple of innings. 

Ray ended up getting charged with two earned on five hits and three walks. After throwing four innings in each of his starts on the road trip, he went five on the first night back home. 

Old Friends

Nobody was busier before the game than Adames, who spent four seasons in Milwaukee before signing with the Giants in the offseason. Adames took about 30 minutes in the afternoon to catch up with Brewers reporters, and he made his rounds during BP to chat with old teammates, most notably right-hander Freddy Peralta, a close friend who will start Wednesday’s game. 

Adames and Yelich choppin' it up pregame 🤝 pic.twitter.com/4Ur1ii6gpW

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 22, 2025

The Giants are still waiting for Adames to break out at the plate, and it didn’t come against his old friends. He struck out the first time up and then grounded out three straight times. The night dropped his average to .194. 

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The Mets, coming off a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals, now welcome the rival Philadelphia Phillies to Citi Field for an NL East showdown in Queens.

Speaking during his typical once-a-homestand media availability, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns discussed a number of topics, including what happens to the roster when Jeff McNeiland Francisco Alvarez come back, the current frenzied atmosphere at the ballpark, and Pete Alonso's red-hot start.

Here are the key takeaways...

"Difficult decisions are a good thing"

McNeil and Alvarez will continue their rehab assignments over the next few days, but there's a chance both players could be back on the major league roster by the end of the week.

So will Alvarez instantly take over as the starting catcher?

"I think we have two catchers who we feel really good about," Stearns said. "Mendy’s going to decide who plays every day and who gives us the best chance to win, and we certainly think Alvy’s going to be a huge part of that."

Meanwhile, Stearns noted that both Luisangel Acuña and Brett Baty have “done a nice job,” noting it’s not easy to bounce back and forth between second and third base -- which Baty has done -- and saying Acuña has been doing what they expected of him.

"I think difficult decisions are a good thing," Stearns said. "When we have players that we want to keep here as we get healthier, these types of decisions are going to become more and more a part of our thought process. We’re going to continue to talk about it, and when Jeff is ready we’ll certainly make a decision to get him back on the roster.

"And I imagine Jeff’s going to do what he always does: he’s going to bounce around, he’s going to play some second, he’ll fill in for the corner outfielders when needed. We’ll see how the center field thing goes. I think he’s excited about that, so there are plenty of at-bats to go around here, and Jeff will certainly get his share."

Hey Siri, who plays center?

"I don’t think we know," Stearns said candidly on what the center field mix will look like until Jose Siri returns. "I think Tyrone [Taylor] is going to get a lot of it, clearly. He’s a very gifted centerfielder, he can impact the game in a number of different ways, and I think he’s starting to take better at-bats as well.

"Beyond that, we’ll see. Jeff could be a part of it. Brandon [Nimmo] could be a part of it. Luis could be a part of it. I think it’s who’s playing well, what pitchers we're facing, how we want to structure the lineup on any particular day. But we feel confident we have enough people to play there, to cover that position and cover it well."

Controlled chaos in Queens

"I think the fans in general have been outstanding this year," said Stearns. "It’s been fun coming to the ballpark. I get a sneak peek at some of the attendance numbers ahead of a homestand, and some of them I did double takes where it’s like, ‘Wow, that’s really good for April.’

"Not only have the numbers been good on paper, but it has felt like that in the ballpark, and so it’s exciting. Our players have talked about it, I think we all feel it when we’re here… I think we had a fun run last year, our fans believe in this team, and we’ve played pretty well out of the chute here, which probably helps."

"I think we have [a homefield advantage]," Stearns added. "It feels like we have it right now. Good players help as well, but certainly I think we have the ability and our fan base, historically, has shown the ability to make this an uncomfortable place for opposing players. When I was on the fan side of this, it’s fun to come to a ballpark that’s an uncomfortable place for opposing players.

"It’s a whole heck of a lot of fun for our players to see that when it happens. So I think we are getting to that point where our players really enjoy this atmosphere and can take their level of intensity to another notch. And on the flipside, it can get pretty loud and hostile for the opposition, and that’s not a bad thing."   

What's a Polar Bear doing being so hot?

"What Pete’s doing is as good a start as you can imagine for, I think, any human," Stearns said on Alonso's torrid start at the dish. "This is pretty impressive. He’s locked in. His zone control  is incredible right now. He’s hitting everything hard. I’ve been enormously impressed."

The first-place Mets are inching closer to welcoming a pair of injured hitters back into their starting lineup.

Before their series opener against the rival Phillies on Monday, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said that catcher Francisco Alvarez (hamate fracture) and veteran Jeff McNeil (oblique strain) will continue their rehab assignments with Triple-A Syracuse this week.

The plan is for both players to complete a full nine innings on Tuesday and Wednesday, and McNeil will receive work at second base and in center field.

"[They're] feeling good," Mendoza said. "I think at this point, it's just more building up volume for them. Getting used to playing the full games, back-to-back, and things like that."

Alvarez, who broke his hand early in spring training, served as the designated hitter for Double-A Binghampton on Sunday, going 1-for-5. As for McNeil, he found much more succcess in the same lineup on Sunday, finishing 4-for-4 with a home run and double. Alvarez has played eight rehab games thus far, while McNeil has played six.

Vientos feeling better

Mark Vientos was unavailable for Sunday's win against the Cardinals due to a groin injury suffered on Saturday, but the third baseman has a chance to see some game action again on Monday. Mendoza isn't ruling him out as a pinch-hitter.

"I saw him take ground balls earlier, he was doing some sprints. He's scheduled to take BP," Mendoza said. "If he comes through batting practice and all that, he could be an option off the bench today."

It's been an uninspiring April for Vientos, who's hitting a measly .167 through 20 games (72 at-bats). But he showed some signs of a turnaround against the Cardinals this past weekend, smacking a pair of solo homers. Brett Baty took over for Vientos at the hot corner on Sunday, and he's once again slated to start there on Monday, this time batting eighth.

Manaea keeps playing catch

Sean Manaea suffered a setback in his recovery from an oblique injury a few weeks ago, but Mendoza said on Monday that the veteran left-hander is doing light toss from 60 feet and expected to move to 75 feet in the coming days.

His return to the Mets' rotation is expected sometime in May, barring another complication. Mendoza noted that they're still "a few weeks away from that."