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Ahead of First Phillies/Mets Series, a Look at the Sunday Night Baseball Hangover Narrative
By Joe Tansey
Published:
One of the trends that baseball bettors love to throw out is that a team always struggles after playing on Sunday Night Baseball.
On the surface, it makes sense because there’s less rest and later travel time for the two teams.
This scenario applies to the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday against the New York Mets, who beat the Atlanta Braves on Sunday night.
However, the “fade the SNB” matchup hasn’t been a good strategy in 2024, at least not yet. Teams are 5-1 against a new opponent on the Monday following Sunday Night Baseball. Two squads had off and two other matchups had series finales on Monday, including the Phillies and Giants last week.
The trend, albeit small, actually favors the Mets going into this game, but they’re also facing the best team in baseball with some tremendous numbers against Sean Manaea.
Alec Bohm, Nick Castellanos, Edmundo Sosa, and Bryson Stott all have home runs off New York’s Monday starter. They have a combined 12 at-bats against the former Giants and A’s southpaw.
Bohm comes into Monday with the sixth-most hits in the majors against left-handed pitching. He also ranks in the top 15 in batting average, OPS, and slugging percentage against lefties.
The Mets only have one player, Jeff McNeil, with more than 10 hits against lefties in 2024. They rank 23rd in team batting average against lefties.
That’s a good trend in favor of Cristopher Sanchez, who is coming off his longest start of the season on Tuesday against Toronto.
If you’re looking at this game for NJ sports betting or Pennsylvania online sports betting, note that Sanchez allowed at least four hits in all of his starts, but he’s only given up more than two earned runs twice so far this season.
Manaea’s been more up-and-down compared to Sanchez. He allowed six earned runs to the Kansas City Royals and three earned runs on six hits in his last outing against St. Louis, but he also held the Los Angeles Dodgers to two earned runs on four hits.
Both pitchers can be inconsistent at times, but when you look at the matchup as a whole, the Phillies are best prepared to pounce on the mistakes because of their superior team batting average against lefties, which is almost 50 points better than the Mets.
Joe Tansey writes sports betting posts for Crossing Broad and also covers the Philadelphia Union for his Substack site, Union Soccer Blog.