So I missed two days, three games and three losses, but thats Spring Training for you. Going back to Monday, the Mets dropped a game, 2-1, to the Tigers as Terry Collins got to manage against his mentor Leyland (thus why Collins is also wearing number 10). With a score like that, you can tell right off the bat that a problem for the Mets on Monday was the bats, which really fell silent only collecting 5 hits (Pagan, Bay, Evans, Thole and Lutz). With that stat, its understandable that some players had terrible days like Castillo (0-3), Harris (0-4), and Fmart (0-3, first bad day of Spring). Also, as you can imagine with the Tigers only scoring two runs, the pitching was on spot the majority of the day. Izzy had a scoreless inning. Igarashi struck out the side.
Then yesterday, the Mets played a split squad with half the team going with Collins on the road to Houston, and the other half staying back to play the Nationals. The Houston game was more interesting, so I'll save that for last. At home, one of the prospects I'm looking at made his Spring debut in a big way as Cory Vaughn in his first AB blasted a 2 run homer. With Castillo struggling, yesterday was a great day for Murphy who (playing 1B, 2B) went 2-5, scoring 2 R. Finally, Wright again went 0-3, this time with two strikeouts. Pitching wise, Izzy had his first blight of Spring, allowing a solo homer, but that was it. His Spring ERA is still 2.25, and he is starting to move off of the bubble and into the clubhouse for this 2011 Mets team.
The dominating story for the Mets yesterday was in Houston as Oliver Perez had a very Oliver Perez outing. In the first inning he allowed 3 earned runs, and according to people watching the game, he got lucky with two outs as the defense behind him made two spectacular plays. Then in the next inning, he was fine as it went 1-2-3. I'll have more on this later today.
