PHILADELPHIA — As giddy as the 10 days just past at Citi Field might have been — and make no mistake, Mets fans, you are entitled to feel every bit as good about that 9-1 homestand as your gut says you should — there was a sobering bit of news that filtered east a couple of hours after the Mets were done dusting off the Dodgers Wednesday afternoon.
The Phillies had been dominated by Tim Lincecum in the San Francisco sunshine, were trailing 4-1 with one out in the ninth inning, looked almost certain to be boarding their plane with a 3-6 record for their nine-game road trip. And seemed sure to be staring at a
11/2-game deficit between them and the Mets when they arrived at Citizens Bank Park today for the start of what promises to be an intriguing three-game series.
Then Lincecum walked Shane Victorino, and Giants manager Bruce Bochy pulled Lincecum after only 106 pitches, and the Phillies loaded the bases with two outs, and Giants reliever Brian Wilson thought he had Jayson Werth struck out twice, didn’t get calls, ran the count full, and Werth cleared the bases with a pop-fly triple, and both teams scored in the 10th, and the Phillies scored twice in the 11th, and the Giants scored once in the bottom of the 11th, and had second and third, one out against (nod your heads, Mets fans) Nelson Figueroa, and couldn’t get the tying run across, and …
And from 3,000 miles away, a vital message was delivered:
The Phillies are still the Phillies.
“We haven’t been playing our best ball,” Ryan Howard, the Phillies’ freshly minted $125 million man, said in the aftermath of that 7-6 victory, “but it’s definitely a big win to go back home with.”
It was a splendid victory for the three-time defending NL East champions, but it should also have served as a useful reminder for the Mets that as well as they’ve played lately, as much as they reduced three would-be NL playoff contenders in the Cubs, Braves and Dodgers to hapless slapstick artists the past week and a half, the Phillies remain a team that can score on you from anywhere on the field, at any time of the game. Baseball Prospectus, at the moment Lincecum walked Victorino, had the Giants’ chance of winning that game pegged at 98.7 percent.
But even more than the Yankees, the Phillies of recent vintage have always made a 1.3 percent chance seem like so much more than that.
Especially against the Mets.
“We’re coming up on a tough road trip, going to the NL champions the last two years and a rivalry,” Mets manager Jerry Manuel said Wednesday, putting his team’s recent run in its proper perspective. “We’ll see how we respond in those games. I think that will tell a lot about our club. It’s the first time we’re going in there and you watch guys very carefully to see what we do and how we react. I’m actually kind of looking forward to it.”
He isn’t alone. It’s funny how the message changes sometimes; before the season, it was viewed as critical that the Mets simply survive the season’s first 25 games, a stretch that ends with these three games in Philadelphia, because of those first eight series, seven were against teams with winning records in 2009.
“I wanted to finish April at .500,” Jeff Francoeur admitted Wednesday. “And now, if we win Friday, we could be five over. Who can argue that?”
Ah, but these are the Mets, so there are some who wish to offer that 9-1 homestand at a discount since the opposition played so lousy. That, of course, is absurd. But it does offer another reminder of how thin the Mets’ line of credit truly is, alongside the rows of empty seats at Citi. You don’t turn skeptics into acolytes overnight, not in this town, not in this time.
Carry this all over to the Phillies, however . . .
“You can’t put extra weight on any games in April and May, no matter who the opponent is,” Alex Cora said. “But we do know who we’re playing this weekend.”
The Phillies. Still the Phillies.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com