PHILADELPHIA — The best man at yesterday’s Roy-al shredding wasn’t Jonathon Niese.
On most days the Mets would have been downright giddy over the performance they received from Niese for 61⁄3 innings against a team like the Phillies. Too bad the mound opponent was Roy Halladay.
“You know you’ve got to be pretty perfect going up against [Halladay],” David Wright said after the Mets lost their third straight, 2-1 at Citizens Bank Park. “I don’t think we lost that game — they went out and won it.”
The Mets should consider it a boon they scored a run. Halladay (4-1) opened the game with 18 straight strikes. Over nine innings, he threw 107 pitches and 80 were strikes. With the exception of a choppy fourth inning, the right-hander encountered little resistance in winning his seventh straight start against the Mets.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a performance where that many strikes were thrown,” manager Terry Collins said. “That’s unbelievable. He was around the strike zone and [we] couldn’t do much with it.”
Collins also became aware of Halladay’s consecutive strikes to begin the game.
“I looked up [at the scoreboard] when it was 17,” Collins said. “I turned to one of the guys on the bench and said, ‘Anybody seen that before?’ That was the first time I’ve seen it.”
It won’t get much easier for the Mets tonight, when Cliff Lee tries to give the Phillies a three-game sweep. In finishing the month 18-8, the Phillies won four of five games against the Mets.
Niese (1-4) gave the Mets a second straight superb start, but wilted in the seventh as he tried to protect a 1-0 lead. John Mayberry homered leading off the inning before Niese put two more runners aboard. Placido Polanco’s sacrifice fly against Taylor Buchholz drove in the go-ahead run.
“You pitch according to the score of the game,” Niese said. “I tried to keep the team in the game as best I could, and unfortunately with Halladay on the mound, two runs are enough for him.”
The Mets had their chance against Halladay in the fourth inning, but could only scratch one run from three straight singles leading off the inning. After Carlos Beltran’s RBI single put runners on first and second with nobody out, Halladay retired Jason Bay, Ike Davis and Josh Thole in succession to avoid further trouble. Davis’ at-bat hurt the most — with Wright at third base and one out, Davis popped to third.
“We thought we were going to be able to score at least one more, we had the chance,” Beltran said. “That little run right there probably would have made a difference, but we had more times to do something against [Halladay] and we couldn’t do it.”
Over the final five innings, Halladay surrendered only two hits. Wright walked leading off the ninth, but Halladay then retired three straight batters.
Niese allowed a double to the second batter of the game, Polanco, but didn’t surrender another hit until the fifth, when Mayberry singled. Mayberry’s homer in the seventh came on a 3-2 breaking ball.
“[Niese] pitched great, today he did a great job,” Beltran said. “He was in and out using his curveball. Unfortunately on that particular pitch [to Mayberry] he just left it up, and that’s what happens when you make mistakes.”
mpuma@nypost.com