213 Miles From Shea

The Mets try to put this Marlins series out of its misery this afternoon as they play the get away game / salvage game today. Even though there was a terrible call last night at third base in 9th inning that cost Hefner his gem of a game, the real blame of the game falls on offense. The bats have fallen completely silent to the point that during this losing streak everyone in the lineup is under-performing. Here’s hoping last night was enough of a fire to spark this offense, which is as spark-able as wet wood right now. Dillon Gee gets the start today vs Wade LeBlanc.

Dillon Gee is 1-4 this season over 5 starts with a 5.96 ERA over 25.2 innings. He is starting to look like a better pitcher. He had a scoreless outing two starts ago and last time out he was cruising with the exception of one inning. He hasn’t faced the Marlins since 2011, back then he was 1-0 over 2 games while allowing 4 ER over 11.0 innings. The Marlins have the following numbers against Gee:

Polanco 2-12
Pierre 2-6
Dobbs 1-3, HR
Stanton 1-5, HR

Wade LeBlanc looks to keep the Mets bats depressed. On the season, Wade is 0-4 over 5 games with a 6.20 ERA over 24.2 innings of work. In his last three games, he’s allowed 13 ER over 13.2 innings. Last year he was pretty good against the Mets allowing 3 runs, 2 earned over 11 innings. The Mets have the following numbers against Wade:

Wright 6-10, HR
Tejada 1-7
Murphy 4-8, HR
Davis 3-7, HR
Buck 0-3
Duda 2-3

Lets Go Mets! (Please, just win)

Last night’s game was terrible. No way around it. The Mets got a good start from Harvey who didn’t have his best stuff, but left the game with the lead. The bullpen only faltered twice from that point, which was amazing because they had to go from the 6th inning until the 15th inning. The Mets bats just went cold, silent and it was just bad. Anyway Hefner gets the start today as he goes against Kevin Slowey.

Jeremy Hefner is coming off of a good start where he pitched 7 innings allowing 1 ER while walking 3 batters and striking out 4. He has now pitched 21.0 innings over 5 starts with a 5.14 ERA. His first start of the season, his second best start, was against the Marlins where he pitched 6.0 innings allowing one earned run while walking 2 and striking out 3. The Marlins have the following numbers against Hefner:

Stanton 1-10
Solano 2-6
Pierre 3-6
Polanco 3-7
Ruggiano 0-5
Dobbs 1-6, HR

The Mets bats will try to find their bats against Kevin Slowey who has been pitching well this season. Over his first five games, he’s 0-2 over 29.2 innings with a 2.43 ERA. He’s coming off of his worst start of the season where he allowed 3 ER over 6 innings of work. He has made one start against the Mets in his career where he allowed 5 ER over 6 innings who have the following numbers against him:

Buck 3-11, 2B
Byrd 1-3
Davis 1-3
Wright 2-3, 2B, HR
Tejada 1-2, 2B

Lets Go Mets!

The Mets try to put last week way, way behind them as they travel south for a road trip to Miami. In the Mets last home stand the Mets started off on a good note take 2 of 3 from the Nationals and then dropping 5 of 6 to the Dodgers and the Phillies. Currently, the Mets are hoping to snap a 4 game losing streak. Luckily, it is Harvey day today as he takes on Jose Fernandez in another stellar young pitcher match up.

Harvey is coming off of his worst start of the season where he still was quality allowing 3 ER over 6 innings and the Mets still ended up winning the game thanks to a walk off grand slam from Valdespin. It also was the also the last time the Mets won a game. On the season, Harvey is 4-0 over 5 starts and 35.0 innings with a 1.54 ERA while he walked 10 BB with 39 strikeouts. This will be Harvey’s first start against the Marlins and the only Marlins who have faced Harvey are Pierre (2-6) and Polanco (0-1). The Mets booth added yesterday that Harvey’s most difficult task tonight will be Stanton (not a surprise) but Stanton has slider power, so if Harvey powers him with fastballs, he should be fine.

The Mets will be meeting Jose Fernandez for the second time this season. Fernandez is 0-2 this season with a 4.50 ERA over 4 games and 20.0 innings. In that stretch he walked 8 batters and struck out 19 batters. In his debut against the Mets he allowed 1 ER over 5.0 innings. In his first two starts he allowed only 1 ER over 11.0 IP. In his last two starts he has allowed 9 ER. The Mets have the following numbers against Fernandez:

Cowgill 0-3
Baxter 0-2
Davis 0-1
Duda 0-2
Murphy 1-2
Recker 1-2, 2B
Tejada 1-2

Lets go Mets!

After taking 2 of 3 from the Nationals last weekend, the Mets then dropped 5 of the next 6 games. The only game the Mets won was a start by Matt Harvey where he wasn’t his best, but the rest of staff stepped up.

The 5 losses in the last week, and a good portion of the losses earlier in the season have come from the bullpen.

Sometimes I want to blame Terry and how he’s pressing the buttons, but it is starting to look more like Terry is trying to use buttons on a plastic car to launch a space shuttle.

For yet another season, it looks like the Mets just don’t have the pieces in the pen to get the job done. Parnell looks solid and Rice is performing well enough. Lyons has good days but also has terrible days. The pen as a whole is just incredibly inconsistent.

If the pen gets more consistent, then maybe the Mets will have a shot.

The Mets try to salvage one game of the Phillies series this afternoon after dropping the first two. The Mets are also on their first three game losing streak of the season. Yesterday Marcum only lasted 4 innings allowing 3 earned runs and then Carson allowed 5 runs the inning after. At that point, things looked pretty bleak for the Mets. Hopefully Niese will be able to pull the Mets out of this rut as he squares up against Hamels.

Jon Niese is 2-1 on the season over 5 games and 26.0 innings with a 3.81 ERA. Over those 26 innings he has walked 12 batters and struck out 14 batters. Last year Niese faced the Phillies 5 times with a 2-1 record and a 2.93 ERA over 30.2 innings. The Phillies have the following numbers against Jon Niese:

Rollins 7-33, 2 2B
Mayberry 9-28, 2 2B, 3 HR
Utley 2-15
Howard 1-15
Young 2-3

The Mets draw the ace of the Phillies staff this afternoon in Cole Hamels. So far this series the Mets bats have not been able to figure out the back of the rotation, maybe because the universe makes very little sense when it comes to Mets baseball, they’ll be able to figure out Hamels. Hamels is 0-3 this season with a 5.40 ERA over the 5 starts and in his last three starts he has a 2.57 ERA. He was 2-0 against the Mets last year over 4 starts with a 3.86 ERA. The Mets have the following numbers against Cole:

Wright 17-55, 3 2B, 3B, 4 HR
Tejada 5-22
Buck 2-22, 2 HR
Murphy 6-20, 2B, HR
Davis 6-19, HR
Byrd 3-11

Let’s Go Mets!

The Mets try to rebound after a subpar group of games today as they play the Phillies in game two of the series. Last night the Mets bats were shut down for the second day in a row as scoring was hard to come by. The team had an incredible streak of run scoring earlier in the season, so hopefully the can get it going against against Pettibone today.

The main headline for Mets today is the debut of Shawn Marcum. Marcum was 7-4 last year over 21 starts and 124.0 innings with a 3.70 ERA. Marcum hasn’t faced the Phillies since 2011. Back then he pitched 12.2 innings over two starts with a 3.55 ERA. Marcum’s velocity is down from last year but he’s a professional pitcher and I’m excited to watch him go to work today (and comparing him to a Laffey start makes Marcum relatively great). The Phillies have the following numbers against Marcum:

Young 4-16, 2 2B
Howard 4-8, 3 HR
Rollins 3-10
Utley 3-7, HR

The Mets bats draw Jonathan Pettibone making his second career start. In his Major League debut he went 5.1 innings allowing 6 hits and 2 earned runs against the Pirates. During that start he didn’t walk a batter and struck out 6. He had a good year in the minors last year pitching nearly 160 innings with a 3.10 ERA. This year he struggled in his two starts allowing 10 earned runs, 12 total in 9.1 innings. I’m curious to see what the Mets do against him today.

Lets go Mets!

The Mets look to bounce back from dropping a series against the Dodgers by taking one from Phillies tonight at Citi Field. Yesterday was a frustrating day as the Mets offense just could not build any rallies off of Hefner’s strong start and ended up losing 3-2 after winning the previous game with a walk off grand slam. Tonight Dillon Gee will take the mound for the Mets as he squares off against Kyle Kendrick.

Dillon Gee is now 1-3 on the seasoon with a 5.85 ERA over 19.2 innings of work. He looked a lot better in his last start against the Nationals where he allowed 3 hits and no runs over 5.2 innings of work and tonight he has a shot of redemption. In his last start against the Phillies, the second start of the season for Gee, he allowed 7 ER over 3.0 innings. Now he gets the Phillies outside of their sand box and inside of Citi Field. The Phillies have the following numbers against him:

Mayberry 4-11, 2B, 2 HR
Rollins 7-11, 2B
Utley 2-10, 2B
Howard 3-9, 3 HR
Nix 2-6
Young 4-5, 2 HR

Kyle Kendrick is 1-1 this season over 4 starts with a 3.28 ERA. Kendrick’s only bad start was the first of the season where he allowed 5 ER over 5.2 innings, after that he has allowed 2 ER or less between 6 or 7 innings (including a 2 ER, 6 IP outing against the Mets). On the bad side, he has allowed 8 hits in three of his four starts this year. The Mets have the following numbers against him:

Wright 11-34, 2 2B, 2 HR
Davis 4-19, 2 2B
Murphy 3-17, 2B
Duda 3-12, 2 2B, HR
Buck 1-10, HR
Baxter 3-6, 2B, HR

Lets Go Mets!

The Dodgers and Mets finish off their three game series this afternoon as the Mets look to take another series via the rubber game. Last night the Mets rallied in the 9th inning to tie the game 3-3 and then won on a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the tenth via Jordany Valdespin. Hopefully the magic continues today as Jeremy Hefner takes on rookie Hyun-jin Ryu.

Hefner had another off start last time out lasting 4.0 innings allowing 3 ER. He started the season well allowing only one earned run over 6 innings of work. Since that start he’s pitched 8.0 innings and has allowed 10 ER. Last year he made 3 appearances (no starts) against the Dodgers pitching a total of 4.0 innings allowing only 2 ER. The Dodgers have the following numbers against Hefner:

A.J. Ellis 0-2
Cruz 0-1
Ethier 0-1
Kemp 1-1, 3B
Uribe 0-1

The Mets bats will get their first look at Hyun-jin Ryu today who is 2-1 with a 4.01 ERA over four starts this season. In his first two starts he lasted 6.1 innings and since then he has gone an even 6 innings in each start. Each start has also gotten progressively worse for him as he has allowed 1 ER, 2 ER, 3 ER and 5 ER in that order. As you can imagine, he’s never played against the Mets and this is his rookie season, so there are no batting statics against anyone currently on the Mets.

Let’s Go Mets!

The Mets look to rebound after last night’s loss against the Dodgers as they play game two tonight. It’s the time of the week that all Mets fans look forward to because ITS HARVEY DAY.

If no one has wished you a Happy Harvey Day yet today, well a Happy Harvey day to you. Harvey will be making his fifth start of the season today. Fun fact, if the Mets wear the blue softball tops (and I don’t think they will) then Harvey will have worn 5 different jersey tops in his first 5 starts of the season. Anyway Harvey has dominated this season posting a 4-0 record with a 0.93 ERA over 29.0 innings where he has struck out 32 batters. Harvey has never faced the Dodgers and the only Dodger who has statistics against him is Schumaker who was 1-3 last year.

For the Dodgers, Ted Lilly will be making his season debut for a starting rotation that has caught a serious injury bug. Last year Lilly was 5-1 over 8 starts  over 48.2 innings with a 3.14 ERA. This year, he has allowed 13 ER, 15 total over 17 innings in three starts in the minor leagues. The last time he faced the Mets was in 2011 where he allowed 3 ER and 6 hits over 6 innings of work. The Mets have the following numbers against Lilly:

Byrd 8-17, 2B, HR
Murphy 1-6, 2B
Wright 1-5
Buck 1-4
Cowgill 1-3
Duda 0-3

Lets Go Mets!

The Mets and Dodgers start a series tomorrow night as the Mets look to build off of a series win against the Nationals. The Mets are catching the Dodgers at a good time as several players are struggling and moral is low. The Dodgers catch the Mets at an interesting time as they just beat two of the better pitchers in baseball (Strasburg, Zimmermann) and the Mets will get another challenge tonight in Clayton Kershaw.

Jon Niese had two rough starts in a row in two cold weather environments. In his first two starts, he was 2-0 over 12.2 innings with 9 strikeouts and a 2.13 ERA. In his next starts he was 1-1 after pitching 11.0 innings allowing 8 runs with 7 earned. Tonight he looks to channel the first two starts. He had a no decision in one start last year against the Dodgers allowing 3 ER over 7 innings. The Dodgers have the following against Niese:

Uribe 0-11
Hairston 1-10
Kemp 4-9
Ethier 4-9
Cruz 1-5
Punto 0-5

The Mets batters will try to rough Kershaw tonight who is 2-2 with a 1.88 ERA in his first four starts on the season. He started off the season with 16.2 scoreless innings which he followed up with 6 ER over 12.2 innings. He had one start against the Mets last year and he allowed 3 runs, 1 earned over 7 innings of work. The Mets have the following numbers against Clayton:

Wright 2-12, 2B
Buck 1-8
Turner 1-10
Byrd 6-9
Tejada 3-5
Davis 1-6, 2B

Let’s Go Mets!