The Philadelphia Phillies came into Monday night's series opener against the New York Mets looking to slam the door on the NL East race for good. Instead, they may have let the Mets kick the door wide open, as New York roughed up Cy Young contender Cristopher Sanchez en route to an emphatic 13-3 win. Philly's lead in the division is still a healthy six games, but with six head-to-head matchups remaining this year, things feel a little shakier.
You'd think that everybody's focus, especially a superstar and leader like Bryce Harper, would be on how to bounce back on Tuesday night. But rather than improvements his team needs to make, Harper instead decided to pin Monday's disappointing loss on ... Sanchez tipping his pitches. Okay then.
Bryce Harper suspected that the Mets had a tip on Cristopher Sánchez: “The Mets are so good at it. I think they’re one of the best teams in the game on getting guys and getting tips.”
— Destiny Lugardo (@destiny_lugardo) August 26, 2025
It's tough to figure out exactly what Harper's getting at here. Neither Sanchez nor anyone else mentioned the possibility of the Mets figuring something out in his pre-pitch process, and the fact that the lefty sailed through three scoreless innings to start the game would suggest that New York didn't have any advance intel. Three walks from Sanchez, as well as two errors from his defense behind him, would seem to have a lot more do to with the final score than any potential subterfuge.
Of course, if you thought that was going to prevent Philly sports media from running with this, well, you must not be very familiar with Philly sports media. Before too long, the usual cast of characters had convinced themselves that Harper had to be right, and that the Mets could only have beaten the Phillies with the help of underhanded tactics — a conspiracy that implicated New York's hitting coach, even!
As I mentioned during the playoffs last year. The Mets hitting coach is Jeff Albert. You may ask, where did Jeff Albert work before?
— Spike Eskin (@SpikeEskin) August 26, 2025
You might be interested to know it was the Astros. What years was Jeff Albert working in the Astros organization?
2013-2018
Makes you think! https://t.co/pSQFwwUURc
Never mind that Albert isn't actually the team's hitting coach (he's the director of hitting, responsible for overseeing hitting development throughout the organization, and he's not even in the dugout for games). Spike Eskin was capable of Googling New York's staff directory until he found the word "Astros". Case closed.
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Conspiracy theories won't help Phillies hold off Mets in NL East race
No one turns nothing into something quite like Philly media, so we're excited for this to now dominate what should be one of the more compelling series of the week. But really, why are the Phillies focused on this stuff at all? They're the team that holds the commanding lead, but between this and Harper's weirdly cringeworthy "rivalry pack" gear, they seem to be overly preoccupied with psychological warfare rather than just winning a baseball game.
They can quiet all of this back down with a win on Tuesday night, and they've got another red-hot lefty, Jesus Luzardo, set to take the mound. But we've seen this team sort of unravel in each of the past two Octobers, including last year's NLDS against these very same Mets. Philly has put itself in great position to take care of business and secure a critical top-two seed and first-round bye in the NL playoffs. They don't need to be introducing anything else to the equation right now.