The last time the Mets and Phillies met it was Game 4 of the NLDS.
Francisco Lindor demolished a grand slam off Carlos Estevez in the bottom of the sixth — and the Mets never looked back as they sent their division rival packing and secured the first playoff series clincher in Citi Field history.
Fast forward a few months later, and the two teams are set to meet again.
The Mets are riding high as they currently sit in first place in the NL East and are tied with the San Diego Padres for the second-most wins in the NL after securing a commanding four-game series sweep of the Cardinals.
Philadelphia is coming off a rough series finale loss to the scrappy Miami Marlins in which their bullpen blew another late-inning lead, but they are playing good baseball as well — sitting just 2.0 games back of the Mets.
While it’s still early in the year, the expectation is more fireworks when the rivals meet again, starting Monday.
“We know the Phillies have a fantastic team,” Francisco Lindor said.
“It’s early, but every game counts,” added Brandon Nimmo. “They obviously don’t like the way things ended last year and I’m sure they’d like to make a statement right away — it’s a big series, I expect it to be high energy. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
This three-game set is indeed shaping up to be a ton of fun.
This will be the Mets’ biggest test to this point in the season and it seems to have come at a perfect time — as their stars finally started finding their groove at the plate during the four games against the Cardinals.
Lindor homered twice during the series and is back doing his thing setting the table atop the order, Juan Soto is looking more and more like himself after driving in runs in three of the four games, and Pete Alonso has continued his early-season tear with an NL-leading 24 RBI.
The Mets have also began receiving more contributions from the rest of the lineup.
Brandon Nimmo came up with a RBI single to retake the lead in Sunday’s game, Luisangel Acuña and Brett Baty have turned things around after a brutal start to the season, and Mark Vientos was showing signs of life before his groin injury — luckily, he was said to be feeling better pregame.
Luis Torrens also continues showing out on both sides of the ball while Francisco Alvarez is working his way back and Tyrone Taylor has come through with some big knocks since taking on the bulk of the playing time in center.
With the pitching doing their thing and the offense now settling into a groove, everything seems to be clicking for New York — and they’ll look to keep that rolling against Aaron Nola in Monday’s series opener.
“We know we have to go out there and play the game the right way,” Lindor said. “They have a really good lineup, they have some really good pitchers — we just have to stay the course. At the end of the day, we have to give everything we got no matter who is on the other side.”
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