Neither club is playing for October. The Mets have effectively fallen out of the wild-card picture, and Buster Posey has stopped pretending San Francisco is anything other than a team retooling around Logan Webb. That context matters more than any number on the board this deep into a lost September.
Both teams arrive on modest heaters as of today — each has won 3 of its last 5 and took its most recent game. The Giants strung together a series win over Atlanta before splitting a wild one with Pittsburgh, while the Mets have bounced between Houston and Tampa Bay results that swung as much as 6 runs in either direction. None of that is destiny for Sunday; San Francisco still has a Pittsburgh game and the first two legs of this very series to play first, and the Mets have their own Friday-Saturday set against the Giants to get through before this finale means anything.
The injury sheets explain a lot about why this series feels like a showcase more than a pennant chase. San Francisco is picking through a nearly 20-man injury list that's swallowed Willy Adames, Matt Chapman and half its rotation depth, while the Mets are still without Devin Williams and lost Jorge Polanco to a 60-day IL transfer. Whoever's healthy enough to take the field Sunday will largely be doing it for next year's roster spot, not this year's standings.