213 Miles From Shea

The Mets travel tonight to start another road trip after a disappointing but not completely tragic home stand. They finished the home stand on a high note, beating the Braves 6-5 and surviving a potential ninth inning meltdown after a fantastic Niese performance. Chris Young will take on Mat Latos for the opener.

Chris Young is 3-6 over 12 games and 68.1 innings with an ERA of 4.87. He already faced the Reds once this season where he allowed 3 runs, 2 earned over 7 innings of work. Recently, he has had one really good start (7 innings, 1 ER) sandwiched between two bad starts (4 IP 6 ER and 4.1 IP 7 ER). The Reds have the following numbers against Young:

Rolen 2-13
Valdez 4-11, 2B
Phillips 1-8
Bruce 1-6
Cairo 0-3

Mat Latos is 10-3 over 141.2 innings with an ERA of 3.81. In the last three games he has pitched 22.1 innings with 3 ER. Earlier this season Mat faced the Mets allowing 7 hits and 3 earned runs over 5 innings of work while striking out 7. Mat has the following numbers against the Mets:

Torrres 5-16, 2B
Wright 2-8, 2B, HR
Cedeno 3-7
Bay 0-6
Murphy 2-6, 2B
Davis 0-4

Let’s Go Mets!

The Mets and Braves play the prime time game tonight as the Mets try to forget everything about the baseball since the All-Star break. Last night was rough as Santana struggled allowing too many runs in too short of a period of time. Tonight Jon Niese looks to play stopper as he steps up against Ben Sheets.

Jon Niese is 8-6 with a 3.82 ERA over 136.2 innings. After a strong start against the Giants (7 innings, 1 ER), Niese struggled in his last start against the Marlins allowing 4 ER in 6 innings. However in that game, he pitched 5 good to really good innings, he just had that one really bad one. In his start against the Braves this year he allowed 4 runs, 3 earned in 6 innings of work. The Braves have the following numbers against Niese:

Uggla 7-23, 3 2B
Prado 5-23, 3 2B, 3B
Chipper 4-14, 2 2B, HR
Ross 6-13, 2B, 3B, HR
Bourn 4-10
Heyward 5-11, 2 2B, HR

Ben Sheets is 4-1 over his first 5 starts this year with a 1.41 ERA in 32.0 innings of work. His first start coming back to the majors was against the Mets as he allowed no runs and only 2 hits in 6 innings. The Mets have the following numbers against Sheets:

Bay 12-30, HR
Wright 4-11, 2B, HR
Torres 2-8, 2B
Johnson 3-5, 2 HR
Murphy 1-5, 2B
Tejada 0-3

Let’s Go Mets!