1 reason Mets fans should be confident for Game 3, 1 to feel neutral, 1 to start sweating

Feel neutral about the Mets because of the numbers against Aaron Nola and Sean Manaea

The Phillies saved their second-best pitcher for Game 3. Conveniently, he pitches against the Mets’ number one guy, Sean Manaea. Let’s call this pitching matchup a wash and leave it up to other elements to decide—unless the Mets do what they’ve regularly accomplished against Nola.

Nola has not performed well against the Mets and specifically the players on the roster. Pete Alonso has homered 5 times against him and has a .320 batting average. The entire roster, including guys who won’t grab a bat like Jose Quintana and David Peterson, have slashed a combined .272/.332/.444 against him.

Before getting too confident with those results, it’s worth seeing how the Phillies hitters have pummeled Manaea. The .309/.346/.680 lifetime slash line is even worse with Nick Castellanos doing a ton of damage with 3 home runs in 16 at-bats. Manaea is a bit more puzzling of a pitcher to predict because this year was much different than past seasons.

Neither of the first two games was decided by the starting pitcher. In Game 3, it might only matter about who can go deeper. It feels like we’re going to get some sort of an extreme result with an early exit or 6+ from both.