Phillies on the brink: They know it. The Mets smell it. Their legacy is ...

NEW YORK — It’s just one baseball game. But we all know it’s more than that. It is the game that will define the legacy of the 2024 Phillies. And it’s roaring right at them, Wednesday at Citi Field.

They trail the Mets, two games to one, in a National League Division Series where three losses would puncture a summer full of dreams. So the reality couldn’t be more clear.

The Phillies now have to beat the Mets on Wednesday just to earn the right to keep breathing in and breathing out and then show up at home Friday to try to do that again.

But on Wednesday, they will have to do it in a place where 44,000 Mets fans will consider it the highlight of their year to bask in the Phillies’ misery. And they will have to beat a team that is on one of those feel-the-magic rolls that used to be the specialty of the Phillies’ house.

The Phillies’ season isn’t over, but it is definitely on the brink. We know it. The Mets smell it. The been-there, seen-this residents of Philadelphia are already bracing for it.

And also, if it means anything, that team on the brink happens to be 100 percent aware of it. The Phillies brought 26 players with them to Flushing this week. And all 26 of them can do this math.

“Everyone knows what’s at stake,” said one of this clubhouse’s most stand-up voices, reliever Matt Strahm, after his team had absorbed a 7-2 thumping in Game 3. “Everyone does. From the day we left spring training, it was World Series or bust. So, I mean, we all know what’s at stake.”

But do they even want to know what their odds look like? The guess here is no. Or, come to think of it, more like yikes, no. But it’s our job to fill you in on stuff like that. So here we go. It also applies to the Dodgers at the moment. But let’s not get sidetracked.

• In the three previous postseasons, eight teams found themselves in this place where the Phillies currently stand. They’d split the first two games of the best-of-five LDS at home, then lost Game 3 on the road. Six of those eight went on to lose that series. Five of those six got eliminated the next day.

• But if we begin this analysis with 2022, the first year of the Wild Card Series, the math gets even messier. In 2022 and ’23, four teams had a bye to avoid the Wild Card Series, just like the Phillies, and split Games 1 and 2 at home. All four of those teams lost Game 3 on the road, as the Phillies did. The only one that survived and advanced was the 2022 Yankees, who won Game 4 on the road and Game 5 at home.

• And of course, the Phillies couldn’t possibly be more familiar with that trend — since they were on the other end of it two years in a row. They split the first two games on the road in Atlanta in both 2022 and ’23. Then they wished the Braves sayonara by sweeping Games 3 and 4 in Philadelphia. Twice.

• But we should mention that the Mets franchise knows how this works, too. Before this year, the Mets had split Games 1 and 2 of a best-of-five series on the road four times in their history. They are undefeated in those series.

So if you’re a team on the brink, you don’t want to hear that math. But sitting at his locker Tuesday night was one guy who didn’t care about any of these terrifying history lessons. That guy was Kyle Schwarber. And he’s pretty sure he played on a team where the mathematical scenarios looked grimmer than this.

That team was the soon-to-be legendary, curse-busting 2016 Cubs. They fell behind Cleveland, three games to one, in the World Series that year. You know what happened next, right?

They won Game 5 in Chicago, then headed back to Cleveland for Games 6 and 7 … and won them both. So if anyone in that Phillies clubhouse Tuesday night was looking for stories of comeback inspiration, Schwarber was there to help.

“What I remember,” he said, “was straight up confidence. We were confident in who was taking the mound because, at that time, we had Jon Lester taking the mound. Here, we’ve got Ranger Suárez taking the mound. Big-game pitcher.

“OK, then we had Game 6. And we had Jake Arrieta taking the mound. So (back to the Phillies’ plight), if we can find a way to get back home, we can get the ball to Zack Wheeler.

“So that’s what we’ve got to look at. You’re confident in your guy going out on the mound. And you’re confident with the group in here on the offensive side of the ball, that we’re going to do what we need to do to put ourselves in position to win a baseball game.”

There now. See how simple this is? Unless, of course, your “big-game pitcher” (Suárez) is coming off a nightmarish second half, in which he allowed opposing hitters to pile up an .865 OPS against him. That was the fourth-worst by any NL starter who made at least eight starts after the break.

Then there’s the group on “the offensive side of the ball.” That group is hitting .204 in this series … and for all the Philadelphians who are out there screaming, it seems worse, there’s a reason for that.

Phillies not named Bryce Harper or Nick Castellanos are batting .158 (12-for-76) in these three games. And the starting 5-6-7-8-9 hitters Tuesday have now combined to go 3-for-32 (.094) in this series. So with very few exceptions, if the top of the order hasn’t gotten something done, the rest of the roster has mostly just baked doughnuts all week.

Then there’s the bullpen, which was supposed to be one of the Phillies’ biggest advantages in this series. Except then baseball happened. And the Phillies’ ’pen has allowed 17 hits and 13 runs (12 earned) in nine innings, with two blown saves, no converted saves and eight inherited runners who have been allowed to score.

So there you have it. That’s the formula to get yourself buried in a two-games-to-one death valley. The question now is how — or whether — the Phillies still have a formula to get themselves out of that hole.

When the clubhouse doors opened Tuesday night, Castellanos was waiting at his locker. He had some thoughts. And he wanted everyone in the room to hear them.

Asked to describe the kind of pressure his team was feeling, Castellanos was so ready for that question, he showed off his only rarely glimpsed Philosopher Nick side.

“As a group, this is the closest to death we’re ever going to get,” he said. “So in a way, we should feel the most alive. We’re only promised tomorrow. And this is what we’ve been working for since spring training, to have this opportunity. And it’s just one more time to show out and leave everything on the field, and however the dice is going to land, it’s going to land.”

You might have thought it would be hard to top that talk of tumbling dice and near-death experiences. But Philosopher Nick was just getting rolling.

Asked how his team could “flush this one,” Castellanos had no interest in reaching for the old flusher.

“Instead of just flushing it and forgetting it,” he said, “I think right now, it’s really important to embrace what the situation is. (If) we lose, we’re going home. Baseball is over for us. (So) it’s a great opportunity, because if we’re able to come in and scrape out a win here, I know that they (the Mets) do not want to go back to Philly for a Game 5.”

But if the Mets are afraid of anything right now, you’d need a CT Scan to detect it, because it hasn’t shown up on the field. Why, in fact, would they even be scared to face Wheeler — despite the fact that the last time they saw him, in Game 1, they got one hit and swung and missed 30 times?

Want to hear an incredible tidbit? Counting Tuesday’s win in an Aaron Nola start, the Mets are now 14-3 over the last three seasons in games in which the Phillies have started Wheeler or Nola. So there’s that.

But there’s also this: The Mets are now 2-0 in the Wheeler/Nola starts in this NLDS and 0-1 when anyone else starts. So how upside-down is that? This is the eighth series the Phillies have played over the last three postseasons — and only once in the previous seven (in the 2022 World Series loss to Houston) had any team won games started by both of the Phillies’ co-aces.

“It’s baseball,” Nola said Tuesday night, after the rest of the media crowd had filtered away from his locker. “It happens. They’ve played good baseball against us these three games, and they’ve pitched us really well.

“Zack pitched a heck of a game the other night. One of the best games I’ve ever seen pitched. But it’s baseball. So I always say you never really know, and especially when the postseason comes. Anything can happen at any time of the game.”

So to watch these teams now, it’s amazing how irrelevant it feels that the Phillies dominated the NL East practically from start to finish … while the Mets didn’t even scramble into this tournament until the day after the previously scheduled end of the regular season.

Now it’s the Mets who have That Look. And the Phillies are playing like a team that flipped the cruise-control switch on the World Series Express three months ago — and forgot to turn it off.

So now it all comes down to one more baseball game in Queens. But it isn’t merely a postseason series that is riding on it. What’s at stake for this group of Phillies? It’s simple, really:

How do they want to be remembered? As a great team? Or as a team that spent parts of the last three seasons merely flashing greatness, but then never finished the journey?

They’ve lived the euphoria of October and felt the heartbreak of October. Now one more baseball game lies ahead of them. If you’re wondering how aware they are of the meaning of that game, their clubhouse Tuesday night was filled with voices that promised they get it. But the only path to rewriting this script involves embracing the 27 outs ahead.

“I mean, the writing’s on the wall,” Schwarber said. “Elimination game. Gotta find a way to win. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it, right? We’ve just got to play baseball the way we know we can — and stay away from that big red (panic) button.”

(Top photo of Nick Castellanos after Jesse Winker’s homer in Game 3: Elsa / Getty Images)

Jayson Stark is the 2019 winner of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award for which he was honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jayson has covered baseball for more than 30 years. He spent 17 of those years at ESPN and ESPN.com, and, since 2018, has chronicled baseball at The Athletic and MLB Network. He is the author of three books on baseball, has won an Emmy for his work on "Baseball Tonight," has been inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame and is a two-time winner of the Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year award. In 2017, Topps issued an actual Jayson Stark baseball card. Follow Jayson on Twitter @jaysonst