With division title getting closer, Nats face Mets for final time

For months, this week loomed large on the calendar. It's the final regular season meeting between the Nationals and Mets, and there was every reason to believe it would be a critical series between two rivals battling for the National League East title.

That's not quite what it will actually be, though. Yes, the next three days do represent one of the more significant series of the season for the Nationals, but it won't be nearly as significant as everyone assumed it would.

With the Nationals holding a nine-game lead over the Mets with 19 to play, even a worst-case scenario - a three-game sweep - wouldn't deal a devastating blow to their likelihood of winning the division. It would merely delay what for some time now has been an inevitable conclusion.

Sure, a complete reversal of fortune still is possible. But it would rank among the biggest collapses in baseball history, and the odds of that happening are miniscule. (Baseball Prospectus puts it at 0.1 percent, Fangraphs at 0.2 percent.)

Not that the Nationals aren't motivated to take care of business, especially with memories of last September's beat-down at the hands of the Mets still fresh on some people's minds.

"I was stopping and had a drink on the way home (recently) and people were telling me about how they remember last year," manager Dusty Baker said. "I wasn't here at the time, but how (Yoenis) Cespedes beat us every day. So, yeah, we'd like to beat them."

The Mets may be staring at a major deficit in the division, but they have been red-hot, winning 16 of their last 21 games to ascend to one of the NL's two wild card positions. They took two-of-three from the Nationals last week at Citi Field, and they'll come to town confident and carefree.

They also know they're catching the Nationals at an opportune time, with Stephen Strasburg on the disabled list and Max Scherzer between starts.

Thus, the three pitchers the Nats will send to the mound for this series are Mat Latos (making his first-ever start for this team), A.J. Cole (making his sixth career start) and Tanner Roark (who lasted only five innings during a loss to New York last week).

Is it an ideal scenario for the Nationals? No. But would they still rather face this scenario than the one the Mets are facing right now? You bet.

"We know that they're in a position where they have to beat us, and we're in a position where we want to beat them," Baker said. "So it should be a very interesting series."