Blogging Mets

The Mets were attempting on Thursday afternoon to sweep their first series in more than two months. They failed, but they still beat the Phillies two out of three, which is something of an achievement these days.

Mike Baxter rounds bases after leadoff homer

The Mets jumped out to the earliest lead possible — Mike Baxter led off the game with a home run, his second homer in three games.

Scott Hairston made it 2-0 in the second with a solo blast deep into the seats in left. Hairston now has 15 home runs on the season.

The Phillies cut the lead in half in the third when Jimmy Rollins doubled with two outs and came around to score on a Kevin Frandsen single.

John Mayberry, Jr. led off the fourth inning with a single and he scored when Ty Wigginton doubled to left to tie the score at two.

The Phillies took their first lead of the day in the fifth — Frandsen led off the inning with a double, moved to third on a ground out and scored on a Ryan Howard sacrifice fly to make it 3-2.

Jonathon Niese did not have his best stuff, but he went six innings, allowing three runs on nine hits with four strikeouts and a walk.

Mets lose 3-2 and travel to Miami with a chance to bury the Marlins in last place in the NL East.

Perhaps the most famous Shea Stadium appearance in movies is the original “Men in Black.” Before crashing into the globe at the old World’s Fair grounds, an alien ship did a flyover above Shea during a Mets game:

For some reason a giant spaceship flying over the stadium distracted Bernard Gilkey, and a fly ball that he should have had clocked him on the head. The official scoring is not available, but he was likely charged with an error:

See previous entries in this series here.

The Mets got some good news before Wednesday night’s game in Philadelphia– Phillies starter Cole Hamels was scratched because of illness. Instead the Mets got to face some guy named Tyler Cloyd, making his major league debut. He actually pitched pretty well but the Mets got the better of him as they extend their winning streak to four games.

Matt Harvey throws 6 solid innings against Phillies

The Phillies took the lead in the bottom of the first when Ryan Howard hit a sacrifice fly to score Juan Pierre from third.

The Mets tied the score in the second. Scott Hairston led off with a double. Mike Baxter was hit by a pitch, and with one out Matt Harvey, who continues to hit as well as he pitches, singled Hairston home.

However the Phillies regained the lead in the bottom of the second. Following a single and a walk, Jimmy Rollins doubled to plate a run to make it a 2-1 game.

In the third Ike Davis singled and Lucas Duda smashed a line shot into the seats in right to give the Mets a 3-2 lead. It was Duda’s 13th home run of the season and his first since returning from the minors.

Cloyd went six innings and allowed three runs — not bad for your first game, but he still suffered the loss.

Harvey went 6.1 innings, allowing two runs on six hits with six strikeouts. He evened his record at 3-3 to go along with a 2.76 ERA.

The bullpen then held the lead, with Frank Francisco pitching a perfect ninth for his 22nd save.

Mets win 3-2. They go for the sweep of the Phillies Thursday afternoon. The Mets haven’t swept a series since mid-June.

The Mets are currently going with a six-man pitching rotation. And I have to ask — why, exactly?

Useless

The original rationale was to give the surgically-repaired shoulders of Johan Santana and Chris Young extra rest between starts. Good idea, but Santana is done for the year and we found out Tuesday night that Young pitches even worse with extra rest than with his usual rest.

So there seems to be no real reason to do it anymore.

The way I look at it, the Mets should do one of two things. Option one would be to remove Jeremy Hefner from the rotation and put him back in the bullpen. Hefner is a pretty good pitcher (who pitched an incredible game on Sunday), but I think we’ve seen enough of him to know that he will be a back of the rotation guy at best, a long reliever/spot starter at worst. He will never be a star, but he could be a valuable member of the bullpen in 2013.

I’m not a fan of this option only because there is a better one — remove Young from the rotation and the roster. We’ve seen enough of Young to know that he will not be part of the team for 2013. He is 3-7  with a 4.64 ERA that is rapidly climbing. Only eight of his 15 starts are classified as “quality starts,” not my favorite stat but indicative of his performance.

I understand that Sandy Alderson wants to field the team that gives the Mets the best chance to win, and that’s fine. But does he really think Young gives the Mets a better chance of winning that any of the younger starters? If so, Alderson is not watching the games.

With one month left in the season, it is time to start evaluating players for next season. Young won’t be around, but guys like Hefner and Collin McHugh might. Let’s see what they can do on the normal rest they would get in a regular rotation.

At the very least if they can distinguish themselves, they could be trade bait to improve other parts of the team. The Mets have a plethora of young starting pitching; Alderson can deal from strength to make the rest of the team better. Let’s start the process now.

On Tuesday the Mets were attempting to win their third straight game for the first time in two months. It took a tenth inning explosion but they finally got the job done against the Phillies.

Ruben Tejada scores in 1st inning against Phillies

The Mets got off to a good start — three straight singles by Ruben Tejada, Daniel Murphy and David Wright to lead off the game gave the Mets a 1-0 lead.

The Phillies got an even better start in the bottom of the inning. Chris Young allowed two walks and a hit a batter to load the bases, and Ryan Howard hit a grand slam to center to make it a 4-1 game.

Mike Baxter cut the lead to 4-3 with a two-run blast in the fourth. It was Baxter’s first home run of the season.

The Mets tied the game in the fifth, and once again it was the Tejada-Murphy-Wright combination. Tejada led off the inning with a double. He moved to third on an infield single by Murphy (that should have been called a throwing error on third baseman Kevin Frandsen). Tejada scored on Wright’s sacrifice fly to tie the game at four. That also knocked Phillies starter Vance Worley from the game.

The tie didn’t last long — Chase Utley hit a long homer to right to make it 5-4.

And Young didn’t last long, either. He was pulled after the home run, allowing five runs on four hits and three walks in 4.1 innings. Yeah, this was much better than allowing Collin McHugh to make his second big league start.

Wright led off the eighth with a walk. Two outs later he was still there, but Kelly Shoppach came through with a double to right to score Wright to tie the game at five.

Then came the 10th. Wright dunked a single into right and Ike Davis followed with a double to left-center. Wright scored to make it 6-5. Lucas Duda singled to plate Davis (running through Tim Teufel’s stop sign) to extend the lead to 7-5. Shoppach put the game out of reach with a mammoth home run to left to make it 9-5.

That was the final score. A good comeback win for the Mets.

According to a published report on Tuesday, the prize on which the Mets have their eyes is third place in the National League East.

“We talked, how it would be great for us, with the way we started the season, to finish third,” Terry Collins told the New York Post. “We played so well so long, let’s get back and at least play for third.”

Collins admits third place is not the be all and end all, but the way this season has gone, it would be nice.

“Ultimately when you finish in third place, it’s still third place — it’s not good enough. We’re aware of that. We have to get better. But for all intent and purposes it would be good for guys to say, ‘After that real bad August we had, we fought back and finished it.’ That might be something.”

This third place talk is news to Mets players.

“I haven’t heard that from anybody,” Chris Young said. “But our goal was to finish first and we want to finish as high as we possibly can.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of that,” said Josh Thole. “We want to be in first place. If we’re in third place and we’re ahead of the Phillies and the Marlins, we’re still not necessarily in the playoffs.”

While most “experts” pegged the Mets for last place in their pre-season previews, at least one intrepid blogger boldly predicted they would end the season in third. Let’s hope the Mets prove that handsome young man correct.

In this week’s edition of “The Phil Naessens Show,” Phil and I talked about the Mets, of course, as well as steroids in baseball and which teams we think will make the post season.

Check it out:

http://phillipnaessens.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/the-phil-naessens-show-august-27-2012-does-major-league-baseball-really-have-a-drug-problem/

Do-nothing Mets general manager Sandy Alderson has been doing some big talking over the past few days. He’s spending money, making trades, making the Mets better. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Sandy Alderson talks a good game, but…

Appearing on WFAN last week, Alderson said after watching the team over the past few years, “Maybe it’s time to make some moves.” Welcome to the party, Sandy. He also said he wouldn’t hesitate to spend upwards of $12 million on a left handed hitting outfielder (even though the Mets have too much lefty hitting, but that’s besides the point).

On Sunday Alderson addressed a few hundred season-ticket holders at Citi Field. He talked about next year’s budget.

“I have not talked to Fred (Wilpon) or anyone else about where that payroll is going to be, but I’m hopeful we’ll be in the same range if not somewhat higher.”

Does anyone else believe that Alderson has not discussed next year’s payroll with his owner? And does anyone else believe the payroll will be higher than this year’s $95 million? This is the same man who said at various times last year that the payroll would be $120 million, between $110-$120 million, around $100 million, then closer to $90 million.

He also said he plans on extending David Wright and R.A. Dickey, who both have team options for 2013.

“It’s not our intention to simply rely on those options and go into next season and deal with their free agency after 2013. We’re going to deal with it up front while we still have a little bit of room to maneuver. But we’re committed to trying to bring those two back. I hope they’ll both be back and I’m excited about the possibilities they will be.”

This is the same man who about the same time last year said that he had every intention of resigning Jose Reyes, then didn’t even make him an offer.

I’m not calling Sandy Alderson a liar; I’ll just say that his past statements have been less than truthful, so take his new talk with many, many grains of salt.

Jeremy Hefner pitched the game of his life Sunday against the Astros. He was on the mound in the ninth, going for his first career complete game and shutout. However those milestones will have to wait for another day as Ike Davis played the role of hero, hitting a game-winning home run, his second of the day, in the bottom of the ninth.

Jeremy Hefner threw 8 brilliant innings against Astros

The Mets got on the board in the fourth when Davis hit a massive solo homer into the upper deck in right field to give the Mets a 1-0 lead.

That was the only run the Mets could manage off of Astros starter Lucas Harrell. He went seven innings, allowing just two hits and two walks to Mets batters.

Hefner allowed at infield single to Jose Altuve to lead off the ninth, who then tried to steal second. He got an awful jump — any halfway decent throw would have had him. However Kelly Shoppach threw wide of second. Ruben Tejada had to go get it and the swipe tag was late. Marwin Gonzalez followed with a double to left that went off of new left fielder Lucas Duda’s glove after a long run. It really wasn’t Duda’s fault, however you could argue that a more experienced outfielder might have had it. That tied the score at one.

And that was it for Hefner. He went eight innings, allowing one run on five hits. He walked one and struck out seven Astros — a heartbreaking no-decision for Hefner.

Robert Carson came on to get the first out of the ninth. Bobby Parnell was then brought in. He allowed a single to left to Ben Francisco and Duda came up throwing, hoping to make up for his earlier play. He fired a strike to Shoppach, who did a great job blocking the plate (also making up for his poor throw to second) and Gonzalez was out at home, keeping the score tied.

In the bottom of the ninth David hit his second home run to win the game. Unlike his earlier mammoth blast, this one just cleared the wall in right, but it was just as good. Davis now has 24 homers.

The 2-1 win gives the Mets just their second series win since the All-Star break, their first one at home. It is also the first time they have won back-t0-back games since August 1-2.

The Mets sent Jordany Valdespin down to Buffalo to make room for Lucas Duda, the team announced on Twitter Sunday morning. Yet Andres Torres remains on the roster.

Valdespin has been struggling of late — he is hitting just .163 in August, but he is still more of a spark plugs that the listless Torres. Does Sandy Alderson really think the Mets are better with Torres in the lineup rather than Valdespin?

Valdespin certainly will be recalled once the rosters expand on September 1. Still though, this is an undeserved, albeit brief, demotion.