The first two innings of what would turn out to be the final Phillies-Mets NLDS game were aesthetically awful on all sides. Second-half Ranger Suárez, not to be confused with first-half Ranger Suárez, loaded the bases with one out in the first inning and escaped without a scratch. An inning later he did the same thing again. So it didn’t feel like the Phillies’ luck ran out in the sixth inning, when the bullpen loaded the bases with Francisco Lindor up, but rather it felt like an inevitability. What did you really think would happen besides a grand slam?

There are explanations for losses that are decent and discreet: a leadoff double by Bryce Harper that didn’t score; a foul ball that looked good and brought in Carlos Estévez in a bases-loaded situation; The existence of Francisco Lindor. And then there are explanations that lack catharsis in their breadth: the offense, I don’t know, should have affected more; Jeff Hoffman, who had a 2.17 ERA in the regular season, probably shouldn’t have had a 40.50 ERA this postseason, but those are saviors for you. It wasn’t the first-round bye that stunted the Phillies’ momentum; they were a post-All-Star Game of exactly .500 teams. That doesn’t take away from the first part of the season, when they were very good, or whether they were still the better team here on paper, but the Mets refuse to play games on paper.

“Do I think they are a better team than us? No,” said Nick Castellanos after the 4-1 defeat. “But this series they were.”

Playoff baseball, right? The Phillies had lost momentum along the way and were facing a team and a fan base that believed on some level that they were destined to win the World Series. last month. Come on; the Mets would not lose this game. There were three innings left after Lindor’s grand slam, and the Mets had a three-run lead – a difficult task, but not insurmountable. But the top of the Phillies order came and went in the eighth; even after the more recently mercurial Edwin Díaz walked two batters to open the ninth inning, it raised only lukewarm hopes and lo and behold, a mound visit set him straight again.

But for my money, the play that most captured the relentlessness of this year’s Mets was Brandon Marsh’s infield single in the seventh inning. Jose Iglesias picked up the ball as he ran to second, and instead of eating it when he initially had no chance of getting Marsh out, he tapped it behind his back to Lindor. The fact that Lindor caught the ball is completely irrelevant; that’s the kind of game you make when you don’t even think about anything going wrong. Of course, Marsh was eliminated three pitches later on a double play. If the Mets have become the Phillies of 2022, the Phillies have taken on the role of the 2022 Atlanta Braves. That’s apparently the Faustian bargain of consistent regular-season success.

Speaking of which, on the other hand, the Dodgers beat the Padres to tie the series, so we have to thank them for pushing the official start of the series length debate to at least tomorrow. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for a 75-game series, so it’s best to take the hits as they come and root for the Tigers the rest of the time.