"Phillies manager Charlie Manuel recited Roy Halladay's pitching line like he was reading from a supermarket shopping list.

Complete game. Nine innings. Seven hits. One run.

"I don't have to tell you he was pretty good," Manuel said.

You think?

For the second consecutive game, the Mets came up short in an arms race with the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park as Halladay outdueled Jonathan Niese to help give Philadelphia a 2-1 victory.

Manuel will send out another ace, Cliff Lee, against the Mets in the series finale Sunday night. There is a strong likelihood that the outcome will be the same.

So far in the first two games, the Mets have lost in different manners. On Friday night they were baffled by a Triple-A call-up, Vance Worley, and battered by the Phillies hitters, particularly Ryan Howard, who hit two homers, including a grand slam that broke the game open on the way to a 10-3 victory.

Saturday they just ran into a masterful pitcher who has owned them (7-0 since 2006).

What Halladay (4-1) did highlights the fact that the Mets are behind in the arms race and falling further behind by the minute. Their ace, Johan Santana, remains on the shelf for the foreseeable future. Their current ace, Mike Pelfrey, has shaky confidence. He got smacked around by the Phillies on Friday and is searching for the stuff that made people think he was close to being an ace during the early part of last season.

And the bullpen, well it's gotten better, but still let one slip away Saturday after Taylor Buchholz came on in relief of Niese (1-4) in the seventh and allowed one of the runners he inherited to score on a sacrifice fly by Placido Polanco. That proved to be the winning run.

Meantime, Halladay took matters into his own hands by pitching the 11th complete game in his 38 starts since coming to the Phillies in 2009."