Mets have a Citi Field hornet’s nest waiting for Phillies

If you simply look at the cold, bloodless numbers, then it would be impossible to say, definitively, that the Phillies will be walking into a hornet’s nest the next few days, stepping into a cooking cauldron of chaos.

Citi Field, house of horrors?

According to the data, hard to build a case.

The Mets have played 11 postseason games at Citi Field since it opened in 2009. They are 5-6 in those games. The last three times they have played there with their playoff lives on the line, they lost: 7-2 in 11 innings to Kansas City in Game 5 of the 2015 World Series (aka the Matt Harvey Game); 3-0 in the NL play-in game the next year (aka the Conor Gillaspie Game), and 6-0 to San Diego in Game 3 of the 2022 wild-card series (aka the Joe Musgrove Game).

Wait, there’s more: While the Mets finished a respectable 46-35 at home this year, that was built largely on winning 12 of their last 14 games there. When they lost to the Orioles, 9-5, there on Aug. 20, their home record stood at 34-33. You could argue it was their lack of success in Queens across the season’s first five months that forced them to treat every game they played across the season’s last six weeks like elimination games.

(Which, you know … they actually were, as it turns out.)