Mets not happy with how many times Phillies have hit their batters

PHILADELPHIA — In Dominic Smith’s version of events, the angst — and anger — between the Mets and Phillies built up not in recent weeks but in recent years.

The hubbub between the teams Friday night, when the benches cleared to separate Smith and Jose Alvarado and nearly cleared again when Miguel Castro and Rhys Hoskins started jawing at each other, was preceded by an incident on April 13, when Alvarado hit Michael Conforto with a pitch. Smith screamed at him from the dugout.

That reaction, Smith said, stemmed from frustration about how often that happens to the Mets, especially against the Phillies.

"I’m not saying it’s intentional, but if you look at the numbers, the Mets, our team, we’re the most hit team in baseball," Smith said late Friday night. "We’ve been hit by the Phillies a lot, whether we go back for years. This is not just something that just started occurring and something that we’re just crying about. We’ve been hit a lot. Just look at the numbers."

Here is the thing about that sentiment: It is absolutely true.

Heading into their Saturday game in Philadelphia, the Mets had been hit by 155 pitches since the start of 2019, the most in the majors in that span.

The team that had hit the Mets the most? That would be the Phillies, who did so 33 times.

Put another way, in the past three seasons, the Phillies had accounted for 10.7% of the Mets’ games and 21.3% of their plunkings.

James McCann, the Mets’ new catcher, said the HBP habit is "something that’s been brought to my attention."

"Nobody wants to get hit, nobody likes to get hit," he said. "And when it happens over and over, the frustration is going to come out, tempers are going to flare and that’s part of the game. But we are aware. It’s not something that we take lightly.’’

Manager Luis Rojas had a different interpretation of the bad-blood origins, saying he thought Smith initially got angry at Alvarado because Alvarado threw near Conforto’s head.

Two of the three batters Alvarado has hit this season have been Mets, including Jeff McNeil on Friday. In seven games between the teams, the Phillies hit eight Mets and the Mets hit four Phillies.

"As far as guys keeping conversations about how much we get hit, I don’t see that going on actively in our clubhouse," Rojas said.

Smith and McCann offered the same theory about why it happens to the Mets: They have a lot of good hitters.

"They got to do something to get us out of our game," Smith said. "We’ve got a long lineup and these guys are really good. I feel like they’re trying to make good pitches, get in on us. Sometimes they flip and hit us.

"I’m not saying every hit by pitch is on purpose, no. A lot of them are obviously mistakes. But when you’re a good hitter, they have to try to pound inside and sometimes the ball just slips and you get hit."

McCann said he saw that frequently in the case of future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera, his former Tigers teammate.

"I understand the aspect of the game of ‘hey, we got to get in on this guy or make him uncomfortable,’ and sometimes it gets away or sometimes the guy leans into something," he said. "Whatever it may be, there’s multiple reasons for it. But like I said, when it happens over and over again, guys are going to get frustrated."

The Mets and Phillies won’t see each other again until June 25-27 at Citi Field. After that, it’ll be Aug. 6-9 in Philly and Sept. 17-19 in New York.

"We’re division rivals," Rojas said. "We’re going to face each other a lot of times. This is not something that you want to happen every day."