Mets beat Phillies for their 4th straight

Having found the Mets' season more than a little frustrating to this point, I enjoyed seeing our best hitters tee off on poor old Jamie Moyer. It did get a little close at the end there after the Jayson Werth (I learned via Twitter that the chant I couldn't quite identify on TV but saw was making Reyes laugh was "Jay-son Worth-less") two-run home run, but Frankie shut the door like he's supposed to.

As nice as it is to be back above .500, the state of the rotation is still such that I'm actually looking forward to the return of Tim Redding. That's something I never wanted to write.

Santana comes up huge on three days rest

Complete game shutout, three days after he threw 125 pitches over eight innings, dominating the Cubs. The game took just over two hours. The Mets are still mathematically alive in the division and within a half game of the Brewers for the wild card.

The Cubs just jumped out to a 2-0 lead on Milwaukee on a Daryle Ward home run. Sheets is pitching for the Brewers, so the Cubs may have to make that stand up.

Omar Minaya needs to be fired

That's it. Send him packing.

The Mets depth in the outfield, the infield, the bullpen and the rotation has just been horrible. Starting Fernando Tatis was bad enough. Counting on Fernando Tatis was totally inexcusable.

Argenis (pron. Are-Heinous) Reyes? What is this poor guy doing in the stadium, let alone the starting lineup? .218/.259/.245 over 110 at bats probably means that even for a second baseman he can't hit.

The bullpen issues are well known. My pet peeve in that department is Scott Schoenweis, but there's a lot of suck to choose from.

And then there's the rotation, where after Santana there were no sure things. Maine was good, but not great and then he got hurt. Oliver Perez is still liable to give up 5 runs at a moment's notice. Mike Pelfrey looks much improved; gotta give him credit there. But Pedro hurts to watch these days. He's done. He's a liability.

That makes our "playoff" rotation (and I mean that to have the Jim Mora inflection) Santana-Pelfrey-Perez as far as I can see, which might not be that bad, but it's not that good either and behind them it's just scary.

Last night's loss and what looks like it's going to be tonight's loss to the Cubs have been especially painful, but it just...

Wait a second... Ryan Church just tied it by going around the tag into home. That was awesome.

Developing...

Update:
Mets win! Mets win!

I hope they sign Omar to a long term deal pronto. Robinson Cancel? Ramon Martinez? The guy's a visionary.

Mets win, Santana doesn't

Johan Santana can't be happy at having started 24 games, thrown 161 innings of sub 3.00 ERA ball, and only having 9 wins to show for it. As was said, with some disapproval I think, on SportsCenter: "Cy Young voters require wins. You can't do it with ERA."

Well he got out of a jam but Scott Schoenweis became the latest Met to ensure he wouldn't get the W for an excellent 7 innings. And I'm not saying he should win the Cy Young, necessarily, and he isn't striking fools out like he did in Minnesota, but he's still been pretty unhittable.

Fortunately David Wright closed the deal in the 9th so there was a 2-out vulture win for Aaron Heilman. And the Phillies got shut down by Chris Volstad, wasting a nice start from Cole Hamels.

Los Mets are now two games out in the division and the wild card.

Oliver Perez is capable of very dominant outings

Sure, he's capable of imploding at a moment's notice, but Oliver Perez also puts up ridiculous lines like this:

	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	HR	Season ERA
O. Perez	7.2	6	1	1	1	12	1	4.15

I didn't see it but my guess is he struck out Ryan Howard more than once. That he didn't get a Win tells you all you need to know about that stat. But you know that team wins count, too, and this one put the Mets alone in the lead at 55-47. Not too shabby.

I can't believe they won that game

I went to bed early, with the Mets still down by two after squandering an opportunity in the 8th inning. Watching Schoenweis come in and pour gasoline on Heilman's fire was pretty frustrating, and I just didn't want to watch the loss to the lowly Reds go final. Plus Francisco Cordero isn't a bad closer. But David Wright is a golden god, and that trumps.

10 in a row has a certain ring to it. As does "tied for the division lead." Let the Phillies have their precious Joe Blanton!

Mike Pelfrey

It's getting harder and harder to remain skeptical about Mike Pelfrey. Forget the wins, that's a run support thing. It's that he hasn't walked anybody in his last 16.1 IP, after being a bit of a BB machine prior to that. He's also got his strikeout rate up while remaining a groundball pitcher. If you want to really get your hopes up you could take a look at fellow tall, relatively late-blooming sinkerballer Kevin Brown as a comp.

Last night's win was the Mets' ninth in a row, but I'm actually still able to retain a fair amount of skepticism about the team as a whole. Relying on Nick Evans and Fernando Tatis as starters at the outfield corners, ever, is not a tenable situation.

Mets are three (3) games above .500

Sure, if you can't beat up on a team that bats Bengie Molina cleanup... but still, it feels pretty good.

I remain concerned about the Phillies, but if Mike Pelfrey really turns out to be a non-busted draft pick, as he seems to be doing, it would make a big difference. The Mets might have the better rotation regardless of whether Pedro returns to form. Hell, Orlando Hernandez is still among the living, and may be back after a few more rehab starts.

I don't have a good sense for what if any deals may be on the horizon. As I understand it from reading my good friend Toby, the elite prospect cupboard is pretty bare except for Fernando Martinez, who I gather is still "untouchable" despite having a pretty mediocre season at Binghamton. (Yeah, he's only 20 and he's at Double-A, but I have this weird thing where I like to see Top Prospects put up monster stat lines everywhere they go.)

C.C. Sabathia or Rich Harden would have been nice gets, but we really need another bat. I know this is probably a minority opinion but I think we could make use of Adam Dunn. We know JP Ricciardi doesn't want him!

Mets hang on to win, 10-9

I'm not a superstitious person, but I did experience a little bit of regret that I added the "victory" tag to the mid-game post on R.J. Swindle. It was a nine run lead, fairly late in the game... but I won't be doing that again anytime soon.

R.J. Swindle needs to recognize

The Phillies just brought a lefthander named R.J. Swindle (no apparent relation to McCain campaign flack Orson Swindle) to mop up the disaster that Adam Eaton left, and Gary says he's known for an eephus pitch.

Sure enough, he does, but David Wright was not baffled. He didn't even look slightly confused. He just looked like one of the world's best hitters watching a baseball approach him really, really slowly and hitting it out of the park.

Score one for the scouts.

Mets finally beat Cardinals; Wright OK

It was starting to look pretty bleak there, but after losing two in a row to the Cardinals they finally got one back, convincingly. It was already 9-0 after three innings and Mike Pelfrey was better than necessary, putting up a very nice 7 IP, 1 ER, 2 BB, 6 K line.

David Wright was pulled from the game with what was originally reported as a back injury but has been relocated to a groin injury, which he says won't cost him any more time. That's a very good thing. I don't think people realize how bad they'd be without him.

Tonight was nice, but if you can't hit 24 year old non-prospect Mitchell Boggs...

Carlos Delgado goes buckwild on Yankees

He just had 9 RBI in the first game of the Subway doubleheader. That's more like it. I regret anything I may or may not have posted that suggested any loss of faith in him on my part.

This was the Yankee Stadium leg of the twinbill, and the short right field fence is why the Yankees are so keen on lefthanded sluggers like Giambi and Matsui. Sure enough, both of Delgado's home runs and the double were to right, but Gary Cohen said both were legitimate bombs.

Trot Nixon catches the last out. NYM 15 - NYY 5. Sweet.

Mets win?

When I retired for the evening, Oliver Perez had just coughed up the lead and was threatening to put on one of his patented fireworks displays. But lo, it appears that Damion Easley capped a comeback late in the game, and established that Jerry Manuel knows how to win games in a way that Willie Randolph never did... or at least the first part.

I got the happy recap from Amazin' Avenue, which has improved a lot since last time I was posting regularly. I'm a sucker for win expectancy charts.