New York came into this series playing its best baseball of the season, while Chicago had been treading water after a stretch atop the AL Central. Both trend lines mattered less than what actually happened on the field Friday.
The Mets jumped out to a 4-0 lead through 5 innings, stacking runs in the 2nd, 4th and 5th while Manaea kept Chicago's lineup quiet. That's the version of this game the pre-game numbers pointed to — a hot New York club riding value pitching into a get-right spot on the road.
Then the 6th inning happened. Chicago erupted for 4 runs to tie it at 4-4, flipping a game that looked decided into a coin flip, and neither bullpen did much to settle things down from there. The Mets are also playing without Devin Williams, Cionel Perez and Reed Garrett — three relievers who'd normally be trusted with exactly this kind of late-inning spot — and it showed when the game got tight.
Chicago finished the job with 2 more in the bottom of the 9th to walk it off, 6-4. It's the kind of result that erases a clean start from Manaea and papers over a shaky one from Burke — a reminder that on the South Side this year, the bullpens and the last at-bat have decided more games than the guys who started them.