The Mets finish off their series with the Nationals tonight as they go for the series split. The ace, Johan Santana, takes the rubber for the Amazin's as the teams bats try to recapture an image of last night and hope to put up runs tonight. For the Nationals, Redding will be attempting to get his second win against the Mets this year and lead the Nationals in the role of spoiler.

Santana, 13-7, has over 210 innings pitched this year, which is already more than any pitcher the Mets had on staff last year. He has 56 BB on the season against 179 strikouts and a nice 2.70 ERA. In his last five starts, he is 2-0 over five games and 33.1 innings pitched. His ERA over the stretuch is 2.43, 10 BB, 31 K. Against Washington this year he has 2 games pitched, has gone 2-0 over 14 innings pitched, an ERA of 3.21, 3 BB, and 10 K's. The Nationals have put these numbers agaisnt him:
     Belliard 4-23, 7 K
     Boone 2-17
     Guzman 6-10, 2B
     Zimmerman 2-9
Guzman and Dukes have been all over the Mets pitching this series, so as such, they are the two players to watch out for tonight. Guzman has good numbers against Santana and Dukes has never faced him. If the Mets can keep them at Bay, they can control this game and get the win. Of course, its not always that simple. The best thing Santana can do tonight, besides win, is to eat innings as the Mets used 8 pitchers last night and the pen could use some rest going into this weekend.

Redding, 10-9, makes the start for the Nats tonight with his 4.54 ERA. In his last five games he is 2-1 over 29.2 innigns pitched, 11 BB 16 K's and an ERA of 3.94. Against the Mets this year he has pitched 2 games with a record of 1-1 over 11 innings, 5 walks and 7 strikeouts. He posted an ERA of 3.27. Here are the Mets against Redding:
     Castillo 5-16
     Reyes 4-13, 3B
     Wright 3-10, HR, 2 BB
     Beltran 4-8, 2B, HR
     Delgado 0-6, BB
     Santana 1-1, 2B, BB
He has had success against this Mets team, but the Mets can beat him. I was at the game when the Mets beat him and it was Santana pitching earlier in the year. Myself and my friends were the idiots chanting silver slugger after Santana ripped a double off of him, which caused a lot of Nationals fans to stare at us and say some not so nice things. Lets hope the Carlos's and crew can do damage tonight and that Wright's bats wakes up from being asleep since Sunday's game. Lets Go Mets!

In what seems like a fairly new award, Radio Shack is sponsoring the Red Hot Player of the Week award and up for nomination this week is David Wright. Last week Ethier won this award and the week before it was Pedroia (in what appears to be the history of the award). The stats are for September 8-14 and where he has he had a BA of .632, hit 4 homers, had 9 RBI's and scored 7 runs. Thats very good for one week.

His main competition is Zambrano, who had the No Hitter this week. Wright is facing Howard, Zambrano, Burnett, and Lincecum in the race. Zambrano leads with 42% and Wright is tied with Lincecum for third with14%. Lincecum, when you see his stats, they look incredible. If you want Wright to win this award, it will take a lot of voting because the stats this week for many players are incredible. I would want Wright to win, but I think Lincecum, 2 wins 17.1 innings, 1 run, 21 K's, is very hard to ignore (that being said, I still voted for Wright). You can start you popularity debate now if you want.

You can vote here

Beltran started off slow but now he is having a good year. He is one of those players who leads silently. Although he made claims at the start of the season (We're the team to beat) he's the type of player who when he starts putting up numbers, there is a lot going on around him. Maybe that's why he produces when he does, because there is no pressure around him. However you want to define it, his numbers are coming around, and it couldn't be at a better time. By month, these are his numbers:
(From Baseball-Reference.com)

I Split         G   GS  PA  AB  R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  BB IBB  SO HBP  SH  SF ROE GDP  SB CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  BAbip sOPS+ tOPS+ Split
+-+------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+--+--+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------------+
   April/March   26  25 112  90  19  19 10  0  2  13  22   1  21   0   0   0   1   2   2  1  .211  .366  .389  .755  .254   107    76 April/March  
   May           28  27 123 108  19  33  5  3  3  19  13   2  15   0   0   2   0   2   5  0  .306  .374  .491  .865  .326   134    98 May          
   June          28  28 121 105  20  30  6  0  7  22  16   2  17   0   0   0   1   3   4  0  .286  .380  .543  .923  .284   144   110 June         
   July          25  25 115 101  15  25  3  1  3  18  13   3  16   0   1   0   2   1   5  1  .248  .333  .386  .719  .268    90    66 July         
   August        29  29 126 109  21  33  8  0  6  21  12   3  12   1   0   4   1   1   3  1  .303  .365  .541  .906  .284   136   106 August       
   Sept/Oct      14  14  60  51  16  19  6  0  5  13   9   1   7   0   0   0   0   1   2  0  .373  .467  .784 1.251  .359   226   181 Sept/Oct   

The Hits per month is a great way to start looking at how he is doing. We are little over half done with September, and he has already passed his April/March totals. This shows two things first is that he got off to a slow start, and second, that he is having a great month this month. The big show for this month is his overal average, its fantastic at .373. His power numbers are also starting to approach season highs when compared to the other 2008 months. As September has gone on, Delgado has slowed down a bit, and Beltran is picking up the slack.

Aside from troubles at the start of the season, he struggled in July. But as he struggled in hitting and power in July, his RBI totals were closer to his better months, rather than his bad start. This suggests that he must have been getting singles with RISP or his few doubles/triple/homers must have taken place with runners in scoring position. If he continues his production now, then this will be a great month. At the start of August I thought Beltran had no shot at 100 RBI's let alone 30 Homers, now he has the triple digit RBI's and he has a good chance to get to 30 homers (a goal that became much more realistic after last night).

It feels good to win one, doesn't it?

On a day when the Mets were getting bad news about resurgent players Tatis and Easely, and on a day after they lost the lead to the Phillies in the NL East, The Mets came out swinging. They actually scored runs last night. They put up that quick two spot in the first with homers from Reyes and Delgado and throughout the game two more homers were added from Beltran. Thanks to a 4 run third, it looked like they could put the game on crusie control. Of course as the theme with the Mets has been, keep the games close, stay nervous, the Bullpen let up some runs, ok a lot of runs, and the end score was 9-7.

I think the look on Ayala's face at the end of the game though explained it all. He came in to close out the game and he basically did an impression of Zambrano out there after he's done with an inning. It's a big game for this Mets team because tonight they Santana, and when Santana goes out there, he pitches like he expects to win. The Phils have Hamels going to tonight as well. Its a big night for baseball as the Mets will try to keep pace, keep winning, take over and just plain beat the Nationals.

As a side note, does it seem like Beltran is having an excellent September? Well he is. 14 games and 51 AB he has 19 H, 6 2B, 5 HR, 16 R, 13 RBI, 9 BB, 2 SB all adding up to a .373 batting average, .467 OBP and a .784 SLG percentage. He really is a silient hero on this team.

The Mets start their quest to regain their lead in the NL East and start their quest to find their offense tonight as they go against Nationals for game 3 in the 4 game set. In terms of pitching, both pitchers are really unknown. Knight will be making his second start and forth appearence this year and Martis will be making his third start of the year.

Knight has been around for a while. He was a rookie in 2001 and 2002 and didn't return to the majors till this year at the age of 32 for the Mets. He was a pitcher with team USA this year as well. In terms of stats he has pitched 7 innings this year with an ERA of 6.43 including one inning against the Nationals where he gave up a hit, a walk and a run. That was last week. In New Orleans this year he was good with a 5-1 record over 12 games 43.1 innings pitched and had an ERA of 2.28. He needs to ice the Nationals offense to give the Mets offense a chance to score. At the same time, the Mets bats need to wake up and realize they need to score some runs so they can win some games.

Martis, the pitcher for the Nationals tonight, is young. He is only 21 and making his third start this year. He has gone only 5 innings in both of his first starts and has a 0-2 record but he has pitched well and his ERA of 2.70 reflects that. He was good in the minors as well with a record of 1-2 ver 7 games over 41.2 innings and had an ERA of 3.02. The Mets need to slap him around a bit and show that they can score runs. Its going to be a tough game because the weight of 2007 is starting to return in the form of media harrasment, and the Mets are going to have to fend that off.

They can do this. They know they can do this. Now they just need to do this. Lets Go Mets! Get the Win!

Last night was killer emotionally. Pelfrey was really good last night. He got into jams, he got out of jams. He pitched well. The bullpen that came in for him also did really. The Mets pitching staff did a great job overall last night holding the Nationals to just one run. The bats lumber continued to slumber as the Mets got one hit by Perez. The Mets had runners in scoring position, but they couldn't do anything with it. Then the Braves came back in their game so for a moment it looked like things would be ok, but then the Phillies won and took over first place in the east.

Why no panic? Because its a half game, the Mets have sometime left in the season, and they have the fight. If they can bring out the fight they had last week, find the click, then they will be fine. Thats all they have to do. Lets see how they do tonight. If they can win, if the bats are on, if they can pitch, then they can get back the East. If not, then its going to be a long rest of the month. We are still in position with the Wild Card, a playoff spot is a playoff spot, but a division championship will be much better. We can do this! Lets Go Mets!

The Mets will try to get back on the right track tonight and defend their lead in the NL East by sending up the generally dependable Pelfrey against Perez, who the Mets have seen a lot of this season. The pressure is starting to mount right now but we all have to remember that we still have the lead right now and and we have control to keep it our lead, all we have to do is win, we cannot give up that luxary right now.

Pelfrey (13-9) is coming off a bad start against the Nationals where he was given a 7-1 lead, and then between him and the bullpen, the lead went away. Personally, he gave up 5 runs in 5 innings of work. On the seaosn he has pitched 181.2 innings now to the tune of a 3.77 ERA. In his last five, he is 2-1 in 36.2 innings ptiched with 9 BB, 18 K, and a 3.19 ERA. If you move back to the five games before his last start, his ERA drops down to 1.86, so he has the dominant streak in him still, he jsut has to dig it out. Overall this year against the Nationals in three games he has a 1-1 record over 19.2 innings pitched and a 2.75 ERA (which shows that he was once again real dominant against this team until last week. Here are the Nationals stats against Pelfrey:
     Zimmerman 5-20, 2B
     Belliard 3-15, 2B, 4 K
     Guzman 3-10
    Milledge 1-7, 2B, BB
Mike has his stuff in him, and he has been pitching confidently. He just has to forget about last week in terms of his performance and the teams performance from the weekend on and just pitch the best he can. He has proven to us this year that he can be the guy who brings us out of a slump, and we need him to do it again.

The Mets have seen Perez (6-10) a lot this year. He has pitched 142.2 innings this year and has an ERA of 4.48. In his last game, he played the Mets who lit him up for 7 runs in 3 innigns. Overall in his last five games he is 1-2 with 24.2 innings pitched and an ERA of 6.20. Against the Mets this year he has 4 games under his belt with a 1-1 record over 21.1 innings and has an ERA of 6.33. Here are the Mets stats against Perez. Unlike normal, these are not career stats these are stats only from this season:
      Beltran 6-11, 3 2B, BB
      Reyes 8-11, 2B, 3B
      Wright 5-9, 2 2B, 2 HR, 3 BB
      Delgado 1-8, 2 BB
Reyes continues to have excellent numbers against Perez this year. He is batting over .700 against Perez this year. The Mets bats were awesome last week against the Nationals since their time with the Braves and last night, their bats have been asleep. It is now the time for their lumber to wake from their slumber and get the Mets back in the win column. Lets Go Mets!

The Astros were a very scary team. They have destroyed the Mets in the two series that they have had this year. They were playing really well and they were making a run for the Wild Card. They looked like the dark horse that they were called in the beginning in the season. Then MLB made a very, very controversial call by moving the series to Miilaukee for the two games. What happens? Well its almost all Cubs fans (being only 90 miles from Chicago), Zambrano no hits them and then Lilly and crew one-hits them. At the same time, Astro players cannot reach their families to see how they are because they are being taken out of Texas and at the same time there is no cell service in Houston.

I have to agree with the majority opinion on this. This was a bad decision made by the MLB for not only the Astro's and their course of the season, but for the PR of baseball, it was also a bad decision. Yes losing these games would hurt the schedule but baseball is a resillent sport and the postseason schedule wasn't even out yet, the schedule could be have adjusted for the play of these games. Overall, it just made baseball look greedy, only caring about the money and not about the families of the players in Houston. On top of that, it made it look like they didn't care about city of Houston during this tough time for them.

The Mets open up a four game set against the Nationals today on the road as the pit Pedro against Lannan. The Mets are back to a one game lead in the division, and the road to protecting it restarts again tonight. Hopefully this time around against the Nationals not only will the Mets hit well, but hopefully they will also pitch well.

I said this last week, Lannan is having a good season and the Mets did a good job of roughing his numbers up a bit. On the season he is 8-13 over 163.0 innings pitched and has an ERA of 4.09. In his last five games he is 2-2 in 25.1 innings ptiched and has an ERA of 7.82. A lot of that is from his last game against the Mets where he allowed 5 runs over 3 innings. Against the Mets overall this year he is 0-1 in three games and 15 innings pitched with an ERA of 6.00 with 2 walks and 15 strikeouts. We need to keep the strikeouts down tonight and hopefully the Mets will be able to produce the same results as last week. The Mets bats will hope to build off of these numbers:
     Reyes 5-12, 2B
     Wright 4-12, 2 2B
     Church 4-9, 2 2B, 2 HR
     Beltran 2-8, 2B
     Delgado 3-7, HR
Church has some good looking numbers against Lannan. The key is to ralley build. The Mets can't wait for the long ball they need to buidl rallies and start knocking in those runs on doubles and singles. Do enough of that and then the game will be in control for the Mets and hopefully get Pedro's 6th win of the season.

Pedro on the year is starting to approach the 100 innings pitched mark. He is at 91.0 so he will hopefully reach that mark within his next two games. On the seaosn he is 5-4 with an ERA of 5.44. He has struggled of late going 2-1 over 29 innings pitched during his last 5 games and has allowed 6 walks vs 23 K's. His ERA during that stretch is 5.59. He has not faced the Nastionals this year but here are their numebrs against Pedro in the past:
     Guzman 7-21, 3 2B
     Orr 2-14, 5 K
     Belliard 1-4
     Zimmerman 0-6, 3K
Key for the game is the same as always which is to keep the Nationals off the bases. If they are not on, they cannot score. Another thing to watch out for with this club is that since the September callups not only have they gotten better, but they have gotten faster. It is a fast team that can cover a lot of distance on the field and can round the bases hard. It hasn't resulted in SB's yet, but that could be an expolosion for next year. Make them play our game, and we go home the victor.
Lets Go Mets!

We are mid way through the month of September, which means many teams are starting to drop and the playoff picture is starting to get constricted. Out of the 30 teams, 10 have already been eliminated mathematically from the division races and another slew of teams could be facing elimination this week:
      Detroit, 2
      St. Louis, Cleveland, 3
      Colorado 4
      San Francisco, Yankees, Toronto, 5
The basic trend that is occurring in most divisions is the races are really starting to narrow down to two teams. As of now for a few divisions, it looks like the division championship will go right down to the last week. Out of the 24 teams in the race for the Wild Card, a 14 of them have already seen their hopes disappear. With the recent shake ups, the races are getting hot. Its a four team race in the NL while it looks like Boston has it locked in the AL (or the Rays if they mess up). Here are the next Wild Card teams to be eliminated from the postseason:
     Arizona 4
     Toronto, Yankees 5
     Minnesota, Florida 8
This probably will not happen this week. But by the end of next weeks the races between who really has a good shot of getting to the playoffs. It's September Baseball folks!

In a game where the starter gives up 2 runs over 7 innings, where Delgado goes 3-5 and Wright goes 4-5 with Two homers, there is no reason, no excuse, to lose, but the Mets did. They had a complete meltdown at the end of the game but before we can go into that a major problem from this weekend needs to be addressed. When runners are on base, they need to cross the plate. Its that simple. That is how the Mets won those two games against Washington. You can imagine, if you will, this series as a flip, instead of having the offense, we had the starting pitching. We need to find that balance again between starting pitching, offense and the bullpen. That being said, a reall congrats to Wright, who hit a new season high in homeruns for a season with 31, and he's heading to a new one in RBI's as well at the rate he is going. Also a congrats to Reyes who has hit the 50 SB mark again this year.

If I was Perez, I would be very upset right now. If I was Santana, I would be very upset right now. They both pitch great games only to have them blown in the ninth and eighth inning by a shaky pen that was shaky, then sturdy and now again shaky. The pen in this game didn't even give the Mets a chance in the bottom of the ninth as the Braves put up a five spot, a five spot in the ninth inning!

The only remedy, to a game like this is to stop the bleeding and stop the bleeding fast. They need to win tonight. A win tonight puts the team right back in the right direction to win this division and to make the postseason. No alarms yet folks, not quite yet. We still got time, but we need to act now.

The second game in the double header was a much different story because of the amazing outing by rookie Jon Niese. Niese was making his second career start after a terrible first start. It has been said a lot, but he was very nervous his first start and that could be seen by the way he was pitching. This was a very different Niese. This was a Niese that did something that only a handful of Mets pitchers have done this year:
Allow No Runs Through Eight Innings
Then the Bullpen did something they only did once this weekend:
Allow No Runs in Relief

Anyway back to Niese. he showed toughness in his pitch count. 116 pitches in your second big league start in this day and age is a huge deal. His K to BB ratio was awesome (7:2) and he allowed only 6 hits over that time. He also managed to get a hit. He was the real story in this game. Lets hope that this continues with Niese. He might not get many more starts this year (if he continues to ace, then he will), but this will be an interesting story line for next year's spring training because he will be 22 possibly going for a role in the starting rotation.

It would be a crime not to mention the success of the power in the lineup as well. Wright, Reyes, Beltran all went deep to score the runs for the ball game. Its not the most efficient way to get it done, but it is a way, a fun way to watch as well. Wright's power would pour into the next game as well.

The first game yesterday, the Mets looked dominant up until the eighth inning. They did the rally the right way the first time in the game when it led to 2 runs. They were able to get 2 runs in an inning where they had bases loaded with two outs. Soon after that, they had the same situation. They opened the inning with the bases loaded and a 2-0 lead. They had every opportunity to get runs across the plate but a ground ball in the infield got the out at home and then the double play at first. Next batter was out and the inning resulted in nothing. So the Mets continued on their way until the eighth inning.

Santana, on his great day, started the inning with two singles so he left. He allowed no runs on the day. Basically immediatley between Schowenwies and Stokes, who really have been so good latley, let the gates open and Santana's two runners scored and then a third runner scored and the game was over. The what went wrong here is easy. The offense didn't provide a cushion, and the bullpen, who really was doing a good job so far in September, faltered and lost the game for the Mets. They had a job to do and didn't do it. Luckily for the Mets, they got a much better result in game 2 of the day.

The Mets will finish their series with the Braves today and it will be the last game that the Braves ever play at Shea Stadium, so the Mets look to make it special for them. The pitching matchup of the day pits a recently struggling Campillo of the Braves against a recently struggling Perez for the Mets. Sense a theme here?

Campillo on the whole has been a nice surprise for the Braves organziation. He has had limited time in the majors until this year. In 05-07 he was up in the majors for a little bit but his season high in innings pitched was 13 (That was in 2007, previous years it was below 10). This year for the Braves he has appeared in 36 games, 22 fo the starts for a total of 146.0 innings pitched. During that time his ERA has been a cool 3.70 and he has walekd 35 batters to a nice total of 102 strikeouts. Now keep that ratio in mind for his next set of stats. In his last five games he has gone 0-2 over 26.2 innings pitched, walked 12, struck out 16 and has an ERA of 6.41. One conclusion is that as his BB to K ratio gets closer to 1, he gets out of rythem, and thats when he has to be hit. He has faced the Mets twice this year, once in reliefe and once in a start and he has allowed no runs over 3 hits and 8 innings, walked one and struck out 11. Here are the Mets numbers against him:
     Beltran 0-3
     Church 1-3, 2K
     Delgado 0-3, 2K
     Wright 1-3
     Reyes 1-3
The Mets tend to strike out a lot so it is imparative for the Mets that they be patient and make Campillo work. If they see their pitch they shouldn't take it, they need to hit becuase Campillo has proved in the past that he can throw strikes. The Mets also proved yesterday that they can't handle the Braves bullpen, so they will need to score early and often to win this game.

Perez has stuttered over his last few starts. On the season he is 10-7 in 30 games and 171.1 innings pitched with an ERA of 4.15. In his last five though, he is 1-0, over 28.2 innings ptiched, 18 BB, 23 K, and a 5.43 ERA. He will need to turn around today because the Mets need the dominant Perez that we have seen for parts of the season. His BB/K totals this year are 91 BB and 154 K. Those 91 BB are a new season high for him and have hurt him against the Braves. Earlier this year he got a ND in 6.1 IP, 3 ER, 7 H, 5 BB, and 3 K. It was still a quality start, but those BB's played a role in those runs. Here are the numbers the Braves have put on Perez:
     Chipper 9-20, 2B, HR, 8 BB
     Francoer 7-22, 22B, 2 HR
     McCann, 4-17, 2B, HR
     Escobar 4-7, 2B, 3B
     Prado 2-10, 3B
     Johnson 0-7, 6 K
He is the only pitcher on the Mets staff that has seen Johnson before and has been able to handle him. Before the first game yesterday, Johnson was hitting .333 against the Mets this year. That will be important because a good number of Braves have a good stats against Perez. If he can control the strikezone, then he will be in good shape today. Lets Go Mets! Beat the Braves!

The Mets open up a weekend series with Atlanta with our ace, Johan Santana, taking on the somehow not injured Mike Hampton. As the Phillies take on the Brewers right now, this is a great time for Mets to beat up on the Braves and attempt to extend their lead in the NL East. When the schedule was first made, this was supposed to be a battle for first place in the East series, as the Braves were expected by many Baseball Pundants to make the World Series. A season of injuries and disappointments, the Braves will be very happy tonight to try to play spoiler against the Mets this afternoon. Now that this is a double header, it is very important that the Mets make their impact heard.

Hampton is 2-2 in 9 starts season. He has pitched 55.0 innings and has an ERA of 5.60. In his last five games he is 1-1 with an ERA of 4.09. He made one start against the Mets in that stretch, his one start against them this season, where he went 6 innings, allowed 8 hits and 3 runs, walked one and struck out 2. The Mets have put these numbers against Hampton over their careers:
    Castillo 16-44 (.364 BA), 3 2B, 3B
    Reyes 8-19, 3 2B, HR
    Tatis 6-15, 2 2B
    Beltran 8-16, 2 2B, HR
    Delgado 8-12, 3 2B, HR, 7 RBI
    Wright 3-11, 2B, HR
On the whole, these Mets have good numbers against Hampton. It felt like a few years ago when he was with the Braves before his big injuiries, the Mets could not touch him. These numbers suggest that these Mets can and they have to. Santana shouldn't pitch like what we have seen in the past few days, but just in case, lets get those bats going. They have done real well the last two days so lets hope for some hangover affect and lets demoralize the Braves.

On the other side of the ball, Santana will be going for hsi 14th win of the season. His last time out he surpassed 200 innings pitched and on the season he has an ERA of 2.70. In his last five games, he is 3-0 over 33.1 innings ptiched with an ERA of 1.78. He has walked only 8 in that stretch while striking otu 34 (175 on the season). He has a 0-2 record against the Braves in start sthis season, but he has an ERA of 2.57, no walks and 4 K's in 14 innings. The run support has been the issue, and these games where towards the start of the seaosn when the Mets were really struggling against the Braves (I believe one Braves blog writer at that point in May declared the Mets season dead). Here are some Braves numbers against Santana:
     Infante 1-20, 7 K
     Jones 5-11
     Francoer 1-10, 2B
     Johnson 4-10, 2B
     McCann 3-9, 2B, HR
The people the pitch carefully around are not surprising. I am always afraid of Kelly Johnson, I feel he's a Met killer. Not so much this year but in 07 he seemed to be one, or at least felt like he was one. Santana's numbers against Infante and Francoer are the types of numbers that are fun to look at. If he can handle the lineup, hoepfully the Mets will be able to give him the runsupport he needs.

Jon Niese will be starting the second game for the Mets today. Last time out he struggled and looked very nervous. Hopefully, now that he has his first game under his belt, and that he is not facing a lineup like the Brewers, we will be able to see a better pitcher from him tonight. His curveball is really devestating and is his best pitch. There were times last game when it did break 16 inches. If you want to follow his curveball I suggest that you go to MLB Gameday as they show the speed, the break, and a few other things about every pitch thrown in a game. Its a great thing for stat heads.

The Braves starter has struggled a bit this year for the second game and he is Jo-Jo Reyes. His ERA this season is above 5.00 and he has a record of 3-10 to go along with that. In his last five games though, he is 0-1 over 24.1 innings pitched with an ERA above 6.00. Don't count him out though because his best startduring that stretch was against the Mets where he lasted 6 innings and allowed only 2 runs. The Mets gotta show some run support for Niese, and they got to hit on Reyes. As a side note, the Mets did win that game by a score of 6-3. 

Lets Go Mets! Win this Day! Keep them at Bay!

If you have not heard yet, there will be 20, yes 20 baseball games played today. According to MLB.com, this is the first time this has happened since 1974. Yesterday there was widespread rain on the East Coast and many games were scheduled for the East Coast last night. The result was 6 rainouts. One series, Cubs at Houston, won't be played today for obvious reasons with a Hurricane in Houston right now. The other 5 rainouts need to play their games ASAP because many of them have postseason implications (MLB.com says 15 of the 20 have postseason implications) so all the makeups got scheduled for today (I would also assume that the games were not scheduled to be made up on Sunday due to the NFL which would make traffic horrible in most cities. For example in Baltimore last week, they had to move Sunday's Oriole game to Saturday as a double header because the Raves Stadium (M&T Bank Stadium) is accross the street from Camden Yards and I don't know if you know Baltimore traffic but it usually up there in the worst in the country, so MLB and NFL really cannoth be played at the same time in the same city).

If you love Baseball, the box scores over the next two days will be filled with stats, attendance could go through the roof and it should just be an all around fun day. I'm glad Shea is doing the games back to back so a ticket to today's game is good for both, I know that messes with their profits and everything, but that stuff is good for baseball.

Lets Go Mets! Lets Go Baseball!

The Mets open up a weekend series with Atlanta with our ace, Johan Santana, taking on the somehow not injured Mike Hampton. As the Phillies take on the Brewers right now, this is a great time for Mets to beat up on the Braves and attempt to extend their lead in the NL East. When the schedule was first made, this was supposed to be a battle for first place in the East series, as the Braves were expected by many Baseball Pundants to make the World Series. A season of injuries and disappointments, the Braves will be very happy tonight to try to play spoiler against the Mets tonight.

Hampton is 2-2 in 9 starts season. He has pitched 55.0 innings and has an ERA of 5.60. In his last five games he is 1-1 with an ERA of 4.09. He made one start against the Mets in that stretch, his one start against them this season, where he went 6 innings, allowed 8 hits and 3 runs, walked one and struck out 2. The Mets have put these numbers against Hampton over their careers:
    Castillo 16-44 (.364 BA), 3 2B, 3B
    Reyes 8-19, 3 2B, HR
    Tatis 6-15, 2 2B
    Beltran 8-16, 2 2B, HR
    Delgado 8-12, 3 2B, HR, 7 RBI
    Wright 3-11, 2B, HR
On the whole, these Mets have good numbers against Hampton. It felt like a few years ago when he was with the Braves before his big injuiries, the Mets could not touch him. These numbers suggest that these Mets can and they have to. Santana shouldn't pitch like what we have seen in the past few days, but just in case, lets get those bats going. They have done real well the last two days so lets hope for some hangover affect and lets demoralize the Braves.

On the other side of the ball, Santana will be going for hsi 14th win of the season. His last time out he surpassed 200 innings pitched and on the season he has an ERA of 2.70. In his last five games, he is 3-0 over 33.1 innings ptiched with an ERA of 1.78. He has walked only 8 in that stretch while striking otu 34 (175 on the season). He has a 0-2 record against the Braves in start sthis season, but he has an ERA of 2.57, no walks and 4 K's in 14 innings. The run support has been the issue, and these games where towards the start of the seaosn when the Mets were really struggling against the Braves (I believe one Braves blog writer at that point in May declared the Mets season dead). Here are some Braves numbers against Santana:
     Infante 1-20, 7 K
     Jones 5-11
     Francoer 1-10, 2B
     Johnson 4-10, 2B
     McCann 3-9, 2B, HR
The people the pitch carefully around are not surprising. I am always afraid of Kelly Johnson, I feel he's a Met killer. Not so much this year but in 07 he seemed to be one, or at least felt like he was one. Santana's numbers against Infante and Francoer are the types of numbers that are fun to look at. If he can handle the lineup, hoepfully the Mets will be able to give him the runsupport he needs. Lets Go Mets! Beat the Braves!

When the Mets play the Nationals, I get to see the game, which is exciting. Living outside of DC, its always exciting when you get Mets news. Anyway, I get that 1986 Mets experience a little as well. Its nothing close to listening to Keith and Ron, but down here in DC, we get Ray Knight, the 1986 World Series MVP.

I have listened to SNY broadcasts, which are, all bias aside, the best pieces of broadcasting I have ever heard, so its obvious when I say Ray Knight is not on their level, but its cool watching him do the Mets because he does talk about his time with the Mets on air. They were really prying into his Mets years this time because it was the last time the Nationals would be at Shea Stadium. MASN (station for the Nationals), first panned in on the mural around Shea Stadium which has Knight's back to the camera as he jumps on the plate to score the winning run in game 6. His partner asked him about that moment and he said that it is a real blur to him because he got to third, looked back, saw the ball go in right field and saw the third base coach waving him home.

On another Mets/Nationals note. The announcers always talk about the recent connection between the two teams. When you think about it, there are a lot of players on the Mets who used to be Nationals and vice versa. At the beginning of the season, they had LoDuca but they have also have or have had at one point in time Flores (Rule 5 from the Mets), Estrada (Mets on Paper), Milledge, and Anderson Hernandez. On the Mets side, they have Ryan Church, Ayala, and Schneider. I probably have forgotten a few as well. This year, the Mets have the upperhand on the traded players only because Church and Ayala have been real pleasent suprises. Milledge has been hitting well as of late and Hernandez makes the Nats a fast, fast team, so maybe down the road they might get the advantage from the trades, but right now, it looks all Mets.

We all know how good David Wright is on the field and how good of a person he is off the field. But I just finished reading a story that is so touching that it makes you just fill with pride that David Wright is on our team, the New York Mets. The story can be found here, and its about community event Wright has taken part in for the last three years. The Mets since 9/11 have been sending a player every year to a New York City fire house, and this year Wright went to Engine 10, Ladder 10 on Liberty Street. It's really hard to put into words the emotions that this story brings out, so I am not going to try any further.

The last two nights have been example of why this September, the Mets are different than what they were this April and May. In April and May this team didn't really have fight in them. If they lost the lead, they shrugged it off (hangover from that attitude from most of 2007). This team however walks onto the ballfield and they expect to win. Not only do they expect to win, they know what they have to do to win, and they do it. The pitching has failed the Mets over the last two games, but the bats have not, they have picked up the slack and they kept going.

Last night it would have been very easy for the Mets to turn it down after they took a 7-1 lead, but they didn't and they were able to respond when the Nationals tied it up. They were able score more runs and get that win. One of the differences is that the Mets are hitting with runners in scoring position. I don't know the exact stat, but it doesn't matter becuase it feels like they are killing the ball right now with RISP, and its that feeling that other teams get when the play the Mets now, and its that fear, that nervousness from other teams, that will make this September different from other September.

Last note about last night, how about David Wright. He has been struggling as of late, so what does he do? He goes 4-4 with a double, two singles and knocks in a homer. He also makes an amazing play without a glove. Does this mean he reenters MVP talks? Did he ever leave? The Mets have 3 legitamate canididates for the MVP, and the voting will be interesting. Talking about nice plays, I hope you say Tatis's flying grab last night, it was awesome.