213 Miles From Shea

The Mets open up an away series tonight against the Dodgers as they try to find their offense that they had a half week ago, and lost over the weekend at home against the Yankees. Going into this last series, the Mets offense was on fire however the Yankees were able to cool them off until the 9th inning yesterday where the Mets finally won a game and returned to .500 for the season. The Mets will look to rally behind Capuano tonight as he takes on Ted Lilly.

Capuano is 7-7 this season with a 4.27 ERA. Before his last start he was on a streak of four starts where he pitched 25.0 innings with an ERA of 1.08. In his last start he lasted only 5 innings allowing 5 ER. Last year he only pitched one inning against the Dodgers, but it was a good one as it was scoreless. The Dodgers have the following numbers against Chris:

Miles 5-18, 2B

Carroll 2-15, 2B

Ethier 1-6

Kemp 2-5, 3B

Thames 1-3

The Mets bats will hope to continue their rally from the 9th and 10th inning last night against Lilly today. Lilly is 5-8 with a 4.97 ERA this season and in his last three starts he has pitched 14.2 innings with a 10.42 ERA. The last time he faced the Mets was back in 2009 where he pitched 7 innings allowing 6 hits and 2 ER against the Amazins. The Mets have the following numbers on Ted:

Hairston 6-20, 2 HR

Paulino 8-16, 2 2B, 2 HR

Bay 2-14, 2B

Beltran 2-8, HR

Pagan 3-7, 2 2B

Let's Go Mets!

In today's edition, we are going to switch it up a bit and look at the minor league! There are approximately 180+ minor league teams in the nation and some of them have really creative and different logos that they wear on the field. The one's that will be highlighted in this series are either awesome to wear or possibly embarrassing for a grown man to wear.

Today we feature the Midland RockHounds, who's on the field hat fits the bill for both of the categories discussed above.

Source

Really good news for Reyes tonight. Several days ago he was 240,000 votes behind Tulo and by the end of the voting deadline, he overtook the position rightfully gaining the starting shortstop. As you know, Reyes has been incredible this season and it was just flabbergasting that up until the end he wasn't leading the votes. Beltran got named as a reserve so for this a good day for the two of them. Your starting lineup for the National League is:

C- McCann

1B- Fielder

2B- Weeks

3B- Polanco

SS- Reyes

OF- Braun

OF- Berkman

OF- Kemp

And your starting lineup for the American League:

C- Avila (Really Deserved)

1B- Gonzalez

2B- Cano

3B- ARod

SS- Jeter

OF- Bautista

OF- Granderson

OF- Hamilton

DH- Ortiz

The Mets and Yankees play the final game of the Subway Series today as the Mets look to stop their losing streak today. The big story from last night's game was losing Reyes to a hamstring injury, and in the meantime, Angel Pagan will bat leadoff for the Amazin's. Today the Mets will try to rally behind R.A. Dickey as he takes on Garcia of the Yankees.

Dickey is 4-7 this season with a 3.77 ERA. In the month of June he pitched 35.0 innings in 5 starts as he posted an ERA of 2.57, and it would have been a lot lower if it wasn't for one bad start. He already pitched against the Yankees once this season where he lasted 6 innings allowing 4 hits and only one earned run. The Yankees have the following numbers on Dickey:

Granderson 3-13. 2 2B

Arod 6-11, 2 2B

Swisher 0-8

Posada 0-5

The Mets will get another look at Freddy Garcia today who is 7-6 this season with a 3.28 ERA. In his last four starts he is 3-1 with a 2.03 ERA and against the Mets earlier this season he picked up the loss despite pitching 7 innings and allowing only 2 ER. The Mets have the following numbers on Freddy:

Beltran 14-32, 2 2B, 3B, 3 HR

Bay 0-10

Reyes 1-7

Hairston 2-5, 2B

Paulino 3-3, HR

Let's Go Mets!

Today's cap connects the longest time of the year with the best time of year. There are many teams that have holiday caps, I just chose the Pirates so they would be represented here, and they all look the same. They are all red caps with a green logo that is wearing a Santa hat.

The Mets and Yankees play game two today as the Mets try to rebound from last night. Yesterday, the Yankees got off to an early lead and that was all they needed as the Mets would record 10 hits in the game but only push across one runner. Today Dillon Gee will get the start as he goes against Bartolo Colon.

Dillon Gee qualifies by innings now to have the best winning percentage in the league as he takes his 8-1 record and a 3.32 ERA back to Citi Field this afternoon. After his bad outing against Oakland, he responded with a quality outing in his last start pitching 6 innings allowing only 3 ER. This will be Gee's first time facing the Yankees franchise or anyone on the Yankees roster.

Bartolo Colon is 5-3 this season with a 3.10 ERA. In his last three starts he has pitched 21.0 innings with an ERA of 1.29. Life time against the Mets, Colon is 3-1 with a 3.46 ERA. The Mets have the following numbers against Colon:

Beltran 12-38, 2 2B, 4 HR

Reyes 0-3

Bay 2-3

Let's Go Mets!

In our second installment of this series, we take a look at one of the most infamous fashion apparel series to ever hit the Mets Store: the Players Choice Signature Series Collection. This was a series of jerseys, hats and shirts where the individual players designed a line of clothing, and it all just looked odd. Apparently the Mets still sell Reyes' cap, which revealed to the world his nickname, “La Melaza”.

After a successful road trip, the Mets return home tonight to face the Yankees for the second part of this year's Subway Series and to close out Interleague play 2011. With the exception of yesterday's game, the recent story for the Mets has been the offense as they have been on a tear of late and hope to bring back that Citi Field tonight as Niese takes on Nova.

Niese is 7-6 this season with a 3.67 ERA. Niese bounced back from his bad start (4 IP, 4 ER) in his last outing as he went out and pitched 5.2 innings allowing only 2 ER. This will be Niese's first experience in the Subway Series as he has never faced the Yankees as a franchise and has never faced any bats on the Yankees roster.

The Mets will get to face Nova tonight who is 7-4 with a 4.26 ERA this season. He has been more or less like that in his last three starts as he has pitched 19.2 innings with a 4.12 ERA. Earlier this season he made a start against the Mets as he pitched 6.2 innings against the Amazins while allowing 3 ER. The Mets have the following numbers against Nova:

Beltran 1-4

Murphy 1-4

Reyes 0-4

Bay 2-3

Let's Go Mets!

A while ago (June 13th to be exact), I was browsing authentic throwback caps (the ones worn on the field for 2011) and found one, the one that is featured below, that sparked an idea for an article series. The point of this series is just to show a cap that I think is really unusual, odd, or different for a team to sell. Sometimes I will include hats that I really like, other times I will include hats with a very cynical opinion for why the team is actually selling them (Here's looking at you Military Hats where no money actually goes to troops).

The other reason for this article series is as you may or may not know (I'm not sure if I'll write about it before you see this post), this summer I am very busy with Teacher Training, meaning there will be weeks at a time where the only real posting I'll be able to do on this site is game previews. The last time that happened, May, my readership took a sharp dive, as it should. To avoid that again, this series of articles are the type I can write and have them post way in the future. I also realize this is very similar to another series that Mets Police runs. The one they run, and it is really good and worth a look, focuses on alternative Mets hats. I will have a few of those here, but this really all hats for all teams (and I prefer to focus on on the field hats).

Today's hat is the 1961 Throwback for the Los Angeles Angels, who where the California Angels when they wore this hat. They wore it on the baseball field back in April, and while they are doing this for a lot of their hats this season, the silver halo on top of the hat is what caught my attention, and is still rather bold to wear on the field:

The Mets go for the sweep today in Detroit as they try to keep their offense running like the well oiled machine that it is. The offense on the Mets has been ridiculous as of late and today they have a tough challenge as they will try to score runs against one of the toughest pitchers in baseball, Justin Verlander. The Mets will look for some pitching support tonight in Mike Pelfrey.

Pelfrey is 4-6 this season with a 4.78 ERA. His last start wasn't that great as he pitched 6 innings allowing 4 ER on his way to a loss. His weakness was the opening inning and after that he was mostly alright. His start before that though was amazing as he pitched a complete game allowing only one earned run. This isn't too surprising but Pelfrey has never actually played against the Tigers and the only batter that has seen him is Cabrera who is 2-6 against Big Pelf lifetime.

The Mets draw the Tigers ace in the series closer as they will have to figure out Justin Verlander who is 10-3 on the season with a 2.38 ERA (league leading). In his last five starts he has been unstoppable as he is 5-0, pitching 42.0 innings with an ERA of 0.86. He has made one start against the Mets and he struggled against the team from Queens as he lasted only 2.0 innings allowing 5 ER. The Mets have the following numbers on Justin:

Bay 1-4, 2B

Harris 1-6

Pagan 1-2, 3B

Reyes 1-2

Let's Go Mets!