As bad as the Mets were yesterday they were that good today and a lot of that stems from the ace that took the mound today. Santana pitched today and showed that he is still the same Santana. He had a good outing, except he gave up his one weakness, which was a solo homer. With the amount of homers he gives up, I really wonder how he will play in Citi because a lot of the homers that he gives up are to left, and not only left almost as deep as Shea, it has a huge wall. This could really drop his homers allowed numbers and potentially pad his ERA, so that is a story to keep your eyes on this upcoming season. Anyway, the Mets lost yesterday 12-1 and today they won 12-1, against the same oppenent, the Atlanta Braves, and no one really did bad, so the two listed there just looked bad compared to everyone else today, here are the box highlights:
The Good:
Castillo 2-4, 3R, BB, 2B
Murphy 2-4, 3R, RBI, BB
Reed 4-5, 2R, 4 RBI, 2 2B
Tatis 2-4, R, 3 RBI
Santos 1-1, R, 3 RBI, HR, BB
Santana 5.0 IP, 2H, ER, 2 BB, 7 K
Green 1.0 IP, 2 K
Gee 1.0 IP, H
Feliciano 1.0 IP, H, K
The “Bad”:
Reyes 1-4
Rivera 0-3
Reed was just smoking the ball today. There are two weeks left of Spring Training an you have to think with this performance plus his other performances (and the injury to Pagan) he is moving up the latter to getting that bench spot. Tatis also showed today why he is going to be a key player on the Mets bench this year. With that, starting left fielder Murphy also had a great day smoking the ball around the field as did Castillo, and both of them liked finding homeplate, because they each did that three times today.
On the pitching side today, we already discussed how good of a day Santana had, but he wasn't the only one who really performed well today. Green, who seems to be battling Parnell to get the seventh inning job, really did well today as did prospect Gee and specialist Feliciano. I am very excited about the pen this year because not only do the players have roles, since there seems to be a 9th, 8th and 7th inning guy, I think Feliciano will be able to be used as a specialist, which is what made him so good and so deadly in the 2006 season.
