213 Miles From Shea

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!

The Mets and Braves play game two tonight at Citi Field. Last night the Mets just could not get the bats going to score runs against the Braves, and they hope to reverse that as they take on Kris Medlen. Santana will be making his first start coming off of the DL. Last weekend Johan made a rehab start in Brooklyn (see pictures/story here). On the season Johan is 6-7 with a 3.98 ERA over 110.2 innings. His season debut was against the Braves as he shut them down for five innings. His starts after that were a much different story as he allowed 4 ER, 6 total in 1.1 innings in April and 6 ER in 5 innings in July. The Braves have the following numbers against Santana:

McCann 9-35, 2B, 3 HR
Johnson 16-31, 2 2B, 3B, 2 HR
Chipper 9-30, HR
Prado 5-24, 2 2B
Uggla 1-21, HR
Bourn 6-19

The Mets bats look to tee off of Kris Medlen who is 2-1 this season over 40 games, 2 starts while posting an ERA of 2.37. His last two outings have both been starts totaling 10.1 innings and 2 ER. He has pitched 9.1 innings against the Mets this year and has allowed only one earned run. The Mets have the following numbers against Kris:

Wright 1-10
Davis 2-9, HR
Thole 2-6
Cedeno 2-5, 2B
Murphy 1-5
Tejada 1-4, 2B
Hairston 1-3, 2B

Let’s Go Mets!

As you know, last Sunday Johan Santana made an excellent rehab start in Brooklyn as he allowed one hit and one walk in three shutout innings against the Doubledays while striking out 3. He then went on to continue his start in a simulated game in the pen.

Oh, I was there too and took a lot of photos:

First, there was an Old Time Baseball Game before the start

Being Introduced

Crowd of People Watching Santana In the Pen

Santana’s First Rehab Pitch

Johan!

His57ory

Skies got scary later on