The Mets fell behind 2-1 last night in New York
If we were talking in April about the National League Championship Series chances are most baseball fans would have told you the absolutely stacked Los Angeles Dodgers would be playing in it. The New York Mets on the other hand, maybe not so much. On June 2, the FanGraphs playoff odds for the Mets hit their nadir at 7.9 percent.
But baseball is always gonna baseball, so here we are three games into the NLCS with the Mets trailing the Dodgers two games to one.
It’s been a bit of a funny series so far with the Dodgers blowing out the Mets in Games One and Three and the Mets returning the favor in Game Two. While likely National League MVP candidate Shohei Ohtani stole the show in Game Three with a towering home run that looked like it might leave Citi Field [VIDEO], it might stun you that by wRC+ the most impactful bat on either team in the extremely small sample size of the Postseason has been the Mets Jesse Winker, who’s put up a wRC+ of 201 across 21 plate appearances this October.
Winker was a trade deadline acquisition from the Nationals who is two-for-six with two walks and a run scored so far this NLCS.
There aren’t a lot of former Cubs on these rosters, although close watchers of the team will remember the brief stint where Luis Torrens was a backup catcher for 13 games with the 2023 team. The Dodgers roster does not feature any players who spent time with the Cubs at the MLB-level.
The much more familiar face on the Mets roster for Cubs fans is starting pitcher José Quintana, who seems to have revitalized himself in his age-35 season. Quintana threw 170 1⁄3 innings to the tune of a 3.75 ERA this season. He has yet to give up a run this postseason through 11 innings pitched and will toe the rubber in New York tonight for Game Four. He was excellent striking out six Phillies his last time out [VIDEO].
Honestly, the most stunning element of this match up may be that the Mets starting rotation of Kodai Senga (who’s mostly pitching in an opener role after missing all but 5 innings of the regular season with injury), Sean Manaea, Luis Severino and Quintana appears to be well-matched and maybe even stronger than the Dodgers starting rotation of Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler and rookie Landon Knack (who’s mostly followed an opener).
Both teams have been heavily reliant on their bullpens early in this series, which could lead to an advantage for the hitters who are seeing the same stuff over and over as the series continues. We’ll find out more tonight in New York. Game 4 begins at 7:08 p.m. CT tonight.