The red-hot Mets (62-44) are set to being a three-game series against the Padres (57-49) tonight in San Diego, having swept the Giants to extend their winning streak to seven games last night in San Francisco. They came into the day today with a 1.5-game lead over the Philles in the National League East, a division that has firmly cemented itself as a two-team race.
The Padres sit four games back of the Dodgers in the National League West, and thanks in part to the Mets’ success over the weekend, San Diego finds itself three games up on the third-place Giants. If the season were to end right now, the Padres would make the playoffs as the National League’s third Wild Card team, but in addition to being chased by the Giants, they’re just one game up on the Reds and three-and-a-half games up on the Cardinals for that spot.
Scoring runs is an issue for San Diego, as they’ve averaged just 3.97 per game. That’s the sixth-lowest mark in all of baseball, and among teams currently in playoff spots, it is the worst. The Rangers are the only other team in a playoff spot that’s scoring fewer runs than the league average of 4.39 per game.
Run prevention, then, is an unsurprising thing for the Padres to have excelled in this year. At 3.85 runs allowed per game, they’re the third-best team in baseball. For the sake of comparison, the Mets are awfully close to them at 3.89 runs allowed per game.
Among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances this year, the Padres are led by Manny Machado (144 wRC+) and Fernando Tatis Jr. (132 wRC+) before things drop off rather dramatically. Jake Cronenworth (115 wRC+) is having a solid season at the plate, but every other player who’s gotten significant playing time is hovering slightly above league average or sitting well below it. Fan favorite and OMG star Jose Iglesias of the 2024 Mets has struggled mightily, hitting just .234/.294/.271 with a 66 wRC+, a dramatic downturn from the excellent—likely career—year that he with the Mets last season.
Digging deeper into the Padres’ run prevention skills, their bullpen has been outstanding with a 3.04 ERA, the best mark in baseball. Their starters have been middle-of-the-pack with a 3.99 ERA that ranks fifteenth.
Objectively speaking, the Mets have been the better team thus far in 2025, and they’re the hotter team right now, too. The Padres are 5-5 in their last ten games, and this is a series that the Mets are fully capable of winning. Whether or not that happens is another matter entirely, of course, as the Padres are no pushovers.
Monday, July 28: Frankie Montas vs. Dylan Cease, 9:40 PM EDT on SNY
Montas (2025): 25.1 IP, 23 K, 6 BB, 5 HR, 4.62 ERA, 4.55 FIP, 117 ERA-
Having only made his Mets debut well into the 2025 season, Montas looks pretty much exactly like the pitcher he was in 2024 through his first five starts with the team. Maybe there’s a corner to be turned or a pitching lab tweak to be made, but he finished last season with a 4.84 ERA and a 4.71 FIP. His walk rate has improved, but he’s given up 1.78 home runs per nine in those five starts this year.
Cease (2025): 113.2 IP, 144 K, 42 BB, 16 HR, 4.59 ERA, 3.57 FIP, 116 ERA-
It would be pretty surprising to see the Padres trade Cease, but his name did come up in a trade rumor involving the Mets recently. He’ll be a free agent after this season, but he’s not pitching all that well despite a very good 29.6 percent strikeout rate. Home runs have been a bit of a problem, as he’s given up 1.27 per nine.
Tuesday, July 29: Sean Manaea vs. TBD, 9:40 PM EDT on SNY
Manaea (2025): 12.1 IP, 18 K, 4 BB, 2 HR, 2.19 ERA, 3.49 FIP, 56 ERA-
In his first three appearances of the season after missing a huge chunk of time with an oblique injury and a slight delay in his rehab process, Manaea has been very good. Until he signed with the Mets ahead of the 2024 season, he had spent the entirety of his career pitching in California. And while he missed pitching against one of his three former teams in San Francisco, he spent the 2022 season pitching for the Padres.
TBD
At the time of this writing, the Padres haven’t listed any specific pitchers as probable starters for the second and third games of this series. Roster Resource has Yu Darvish as the projected pitcher for this game, and if it his him, well, he’s struggled mightily in limited work this year. Darvish has a 9.18 ERA with a 5.31 FIP in 16.2 innings.
Wednesday, July 30: Clay Holmes vs. TBD, 4:10 PM EDT on SNY
Holmes (2025): 113.2 IP, 88 K, 44 BB, 11 HR, 3.40 ERA, 4.14 FIP, 86 ERA-
Let’s start by pointing out that Holmes’s strikeouts, walks, and home runs are all multiples of eleven. You’d like to see lower walk and home run rates, of course, but hey, that caught my eye. As for the ongoing discussion around whether or not Holmes should continue pitching in the rotation, he hasn’t pitched more than five-and-one-third innings since June 7. But his start in San Francisco saw him give up just one run in his five innings of work, a marked improvement from the 6.46 ERA that he had in the three starts leading up that one.
TBD
Roster Resource thinks it’ll be Nick Pivetta pitching in the series finale. Having been linked to the Mets during the offseason, he’s had a spectacular year with a 2.81 ERA and a 3.16 FIP through 121.2 innings. For a pitcher who has a career 4.55 ERA and never had a single season ERA better than 4.04, that’s a big step forward. San Diego seems to have unlocked whatever it was that had the Mets interested in signing him, but he’s under contract with the Padres through the end of the 2028 season.
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