Once again, the Mets offense showed that they don’t sweat the big guys. Tim Lincecum came into Tuesday nights game 10-1, having not lost since April. Today, Lincecum is 10-2. Just like the Mets took care of business against the three big guys for Arizona; Owings, Webb and Harren, they did so against Lincecum last night. In his six innings of work he allowed four runs, walking two, and struck out four. I must admit, I took great delight in watching the Mets beat up Lincecum. For those of you familiar with Mike and the Mad Dog, we are sick of hearing from Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo about Lincecum! Hopefully last night the Mets shut Mad Dog up, if we’re lucky at the end of this three game series, the Giants and Russo will be totally defeated!
The offense looked good last night. Argenis Reyes got his first hit of his MLB career, it was late in the game, but fun to see nonetheless. The real offense came from Carlos Beltran, he hit a three run homer in the first to give the Mets and early lead; he was 3-4 on the night with four RBI. Carlos Delgado was 2-3 with a homer, walk, and one RBI. Fernando Tatis played left field last night, and went 2-4 with a homerun. It would be great if they could keep it up and ride this into the all star break with a nice little hot streak going for them.
Mike Pelfrey did a great job last night. He has now won five straight and for the first time in his carrer he did not allow a walk. It looks as if the light suddenly went on and he has figured some things out. He was aggressive and got ahead of hitters. He did have some trouble in the first inning, and some of that was thanks to a terrible call by the umpires-yet again. But, Pelfrey pitched out of trouble and shut down the feeble Giants offense pretty much for the rest of the night. I think at one point he had actually retired something like 17 or 18 in a row.
The Mets are just 1.5 out of the division, as the Phillies lost to the Cardinals last night. The Marlins lost 10-1 to the Padres and are now tied with the Mets for second place.
Sadly, the Mets are again without Ryan Church who was put back on the 15 day DL because of a migraine that he suffered in the Phillies series. An MRI performed earlier this week was negative. While the Mets have been winning, this is a big blow once again to the line up. Church is having a carreer year and no one knows for certain, but he might not be able to play for the rest of the season. I can’t imagine how frustrating this is for Church, especially considering that when he was finally able to rejoin the team he picked up right where he left off. The Mets really screwed this thing up from the beginning, and you have to wonder if they’d actually handled this the right way from the get go would Church be ok now.
First pitch is scheduled for 7:10 p.m. Johan Santana will be on the hill for the Mets. Santana has not gotten a win since June 1st and has lost his last four decisions. The Giants will counter with Jonathan Sanchez.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I agree, umps have been awful this year. Worse than ever before. How could that guy NOT be out of the bsaeline. He practically knocked Pelfry over on the mound.
As for Church, the NFL and MLB may have to take a page from the NHL. The NHL is very conservative when it comes to concussions and holds players out for a minimum amount of time, I believe two weeks. MLB has no set parameters and the NFL is like…”how many fingers am I holding up? Two? Well, it was three but close enough, get in there and kill’em”
July 9th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Excellent point Large, but I think in the case of the NFL-they aren’t really sure if the guy can’t tell if they are holding up two fingers or if they can’t count that high.
I do think that the NHL has the right idea about concussions and how they should handle them. I think that maybe Church needed to be more forth coming with what was really happening with him, but management needs to take the decision out of the player’s hands.