Top stats to know: Washington Nationals vs. New York Mets

1:45 AM ET

The Washington Nationals and New York Mets meet for the first time this season in a three-game series at Citi Field that begins Tuesday. Here’s a quick look at a few of the storylines in this series.

Remember how 2015 ended?

Both teams surely remember how much the Mets dominated the Nationals at the end of 2015. The Mets swept a three-game series immediately after trading for Yoenis Cespedes, then took three more from the Nationals in September. Among the highlights was Wilmer Flores’ walk-off home run on July 31, two days after it appeared he was traded to the Brewers.

Mets and Nationals – Since May 5MetsNationalsW-L4-74-7Runs PG2.93.7Opp Runs PG3.85.0BA.215.236

Those first three wins jump-started the Mets, who did something never before done by an NL team in the modern era: They scored the fewest runs in the league the first four months of the season and the most in the league in the last two months.

The Nationals currently lead the Mets by 1½ games in the NL East. But both teams have slumped of late, as the chart on the right notes.

Scherzer’s encore

Max Scherzer tied a major-league record with his 20-strikeout performance on Wednesday, but now the focus will be on what he does on Tuesday night. Of the previous four instances in which a pitcher recorded 20 strikeouts within nine innings, three had double-digit strikeouts in the next outing.

Kerry Wood’s modern major-league record of 33 strikeouts in a two-game span (a 20-strikeout game followed by a 13-strikeout game) is the mark Scherzer is chasing. The most strikeouts in a two-game span among active pitchers is …

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