Biggest lead since 1988

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor gloom of night shall keep this team from its appointed beat-downs.

The rain delay may have actually helped the Mets by knocking Orlando Hernandez out of the game. He did strike out three in his three innings, but also gave up two including a solo home run (Rollins, again). Of course, it didn't matter because once again the Mets built a healthy lead in the early innings.

I obviously made too much of the difficulty of getting to Brett Myers. The suddenly unstoppable Mets lineup, with a lot of help from the Philly defense, touched him up to the tune of six runs on nine hits in 2.2 innings.

Jose Reyes had four hits, Delgado drove in three, and David Wright hit a solo home run for the second consecutive night.

Heath Bell just put them out of their misery with a clean ninth inning. Final score: 9-3. Darren Oliver, who did a nice job in his three innings after the delay, picked up the win.

***

I don't even know what the baserunning mistake Lastings Milledge made tonight that drew the ire of Willie Randolph. Whatever it was, making a big show of berating His Royal Crunkness in the dugout struck me as characteristic drama-queenery.

Update: he looked over his shoulder at a fly ball with two outs, rather than just running all out. Yeah, it was an obvious mental mistake, but at least it wasn't laziness.

***

Mike Pelfrey is now officially dominating the Eastern League. Since his so-so early performances, he's improved his strikeout rate (10.2K/9IP) and ERA (2.83) considerably. Before I get accused of getting overly excited about a college pitcher's mastery of Double-A, his rate numbers are still not as good as Alay Soler's were (albeit in fewer innings) at the same level. While Soler has probably pitched well enough to stick, he hasn't yet looked like a real difference maker.

I still have concerns about the Soler/Hernandez tandem long-term, but they're not going to pitch us out of contention anytime soon, given the way the team is hitting right now. One nice thing about having a whopping 8.5 game lead in June is that Omar doesn't really have to rush him.

All the same, I think Pelfrey, with his polish and velocity and 6'7"-ness, would probably be an upgrade right now if pressed into duty. Of course, the team doesn't really seem to need one.