Thursday, September 17 · Phillies 3, Mets 0

The one thing

We went to throw this one out, and it wouldn’t go.

Aaron Nola held the Mets to three hits over seven innings, and the broadcast noted he has a 2.07 ERA over his last ten starts. That is exactly the kind of line we usually discard. Good pitchers produce ten-start stretches like that all the time. Over the last decade, one regular starter in four has one somewhere in his season.

But almost all of them are pitchers who were excellent all year. Among starters whose full-season ERA sits above 3.50, it happens about once in twelve. Nola was 3-7 in mid-July with two quality starts in eight outings. This is a genuine turnaround, and the Mets ran into the middle of it.

Thrown out

“Held hitless into the sixth.” It sounds like a brush with a no-hitter.

The Mets are held hitless through five innings about twice a season. It has happened 145 times since 1962, and eight times in the last two years alone. Most of those games end the way this one did: a few late hits and a loss.

How we got there

Every Mets game since 1962, 10,133 of them, checked inning by inning for a team with no hits through five: 145, or 2.27 a season. For the ten-start window, every pitcher with 25 or more starts from 2015 through 2025, 874 pitcher-seasons, searched for any stretch of ten consecutive starts at 2.07 or better. 218 had one. The share is 88% for pitchers who finished the season under 3.00, 8% for those above 3.50, and 2% for those above 4.00. That test looks for a pitcher’s best ten-start stretch, which is more generous than his last ten, so Nola’s run is if anything slightly rarer than stated.