Mick Abel struggles in 11-4 loss to Mets, allowing four homers in only three innings

When the Phillies and Mets are contending simultaneously, a phenomenon that has occurred only 11 times in their 63-year coexistence, there isn’t a better rivalry in baseball.

The question, then, Saturday: Could Mick Abel handle it?

“Well, he did pretty good against [Paul] Skenes,” manager Rob Thomson said, referencing Abel’s memorable major league debut last month. “So, I think he’ll be fine.”

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OK, but in June, the spotlight doesn’t get much brighter than Phillies-Mets ... on a Saturday night ... in sold-out Citizens Bank Park ... on national television. And few top-of-the-order trios are better than New York’s Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, and $765 million man Juan Soto.

So, yeah, this was unlike anything Abel had experienced.

It didn’t go well. Abel gave up back-to-back-back homers to Lindor, Nimmo, and Soto in the third inning — and four of the Mets’ seven dingers overall (all solos) — in an 11-4 Phillies loss that evened both the three-game series and the NL East standings.

But at least Abel didn’t have to dig deep to figure out what went wrong.

“Fastball command, in general,” he said. “Just missing the zone too much. Trying to go top rail or above the zone, but just kind of left it over the plate.”

The teams, with matching 46-31 records, will square off again Sunday night — also on national television (ESPN) — with Jesús Luzardo facing Mets lefty David Peterson. After that, they won’t meet again until Aug. 25 in New York.

It’s doubtful either will have pulled away from the other by then.

If the Phillies won a track meet in the series opener, a 10-2 victory highlighted by the synchronized slides into home by Nick Castellanos and J.T. Realmuto, the Mets responded by taking a slugfest. The seven homers were the most allowed by the Phillies since last July 14, when the Athletics hit eight against them at home.

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Making his fifth major league start, Abel planned to attack the Mets by getting them to swing at fastballs above the strike zone. None was elevated quite enough. Even when he managed to climb the ladder with a full-count heater, Soto smashed it into the right-field bleachers.

“A little higher would’ve been great,” Abel said. “I mean, props to him. He’s obviously a really good hitter. He banged it.”

Nimmo took Abel deep in the first inning, and the Mets erased a 2-1 deficit with the power surge in the third. Soto homered again in the fifth against reliever Joe Ross before Jared Young and Francisco Alvarez tacked on garbage-time homers in the eighth and ninth innings, respectively.

But the Mets’ lead was only 5-4 in the sixth when Lindor effectively clinched it. He sliced a high fly ball into the right-field corner. Castellanos appeared to overrun it, and the ball banged off the top of the wall for a two-run double.

“I think the wind blew it back into fair territory,” Thomson said. “And I couldn’t believe it went that far, to tell you the truth, off the bat.”

Soto finished with four hits, while the Lindor-Nimmo-Soto combination went 8-for-14 with nine RBIs.

The Phillies had eight hits overall.

But this was mostly about Abel. With Aaron Nola sidelined by a stress fracture in his ribcage and top prospect Andrew Painter unlikely to make his debut before the All-Star break, Abel is expected to stay in the rotation. He figures to make three more starts before the break, beginning next week in Atlanta.

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So, after Abel expended 73 pitches to finish three innings, Thomson told him he wasn’t going back out for the fourth. But he didn’t sense Abel’s confidence was shaken, either.

“I thought his poise was pretty good when I talked to him,” Thomson said. “Seventy-three pitches in three innings is a lot for a young guy, and we’ve got to protect him.”

In five starts, Abel has a 3.47 ERA. It’s notable, though, that he yielded two earned runs in 16⅓ innings against the lowly Pirates and Marlins and middling Blue Jays. But against the Cubs and Mets, two of the best offenses in the National League, he gave up seven runs on 12 hits, including seven homers, in seven innings.

“The start against the Cubs, he went four innings. That’s a good ballclub,” Thomson said. “Everything else has been fine. So, he’s just got to get back to doing what he does, executing pitches, commanding his fastball.”

It wasn’t only fastball command that betrayed Abel. After Nimmo hit a belt-high heater in the first inning, Abel tried to bounce a curveball in the third. It stayed knee-high, and Nimmo hooked it out to right field.

Welcome to the Phillies-Mets.

“They’ve all got really good approaches that they can pick on the heater whenever they want,” Abel said. “I pitch off my fastball. So, it’s pretty tough.”

Like the Phillies, the Mets aren’t going anywhere. Maybe Abel will a chance to see them again.