213 Miles From Shea

The Mets go for a series victory today in Texas as they take on the Rangers. After being beaten in every way possible on Friday night, the Mets had a difficult task coming into Saturday. Yesterday they faced one of the better rookies on the Rangers staff and they had to do without Turner and without a suddenly productive Jason Bay. The Mets “B” lineup, which due to team injuries is really a “C” lineup, played like an “A+” lineup as they scored 14 runs without a homerun. This sort of offensive burst seems like a familiar theme this year where the bench players, when playing together seem to get a lot of hits. Anyway, the Mets look to repeat that this afternoon behind Dillon Gee.

Dillon Gee suffered his first loss of the year in his last start, making his record 7-1 with a 3.21 ERA. Today is a big day for Gee as he will be pitching in his home state where he played High School and in College. Before his last start, where he allowed 4 ER in 4 innings of work, he pitched 19.0 innings over three games while allowing only one earned run. Dillon has never faced the Rangers organization and has never faced any batters in their lineup.

The Mets batters will try to repeat Saturday against Derek Holland today who is 6-2 this season with a 4.69 ERA. In his last three starts he has pitched 19.2 innings with an ERA of 5.95. The only Mets who have seen Holland are Jason Bay who is 2-6 with a home run and Hairston who is 0-6. Holland has never faced the Mets organization before, which has become a common theme this interleague play.

Let's Go Mets!

The Mets will look to bounce back from a disappointing last night this afternoon as they play the Rangers in Texas in a nationally broadcasted game. Last night the bullpen and the starting pitching couldn't handle the Rangers bats as the long ball helped the Rangers jump to 8 runs. Meanwhile, the Mets bats, who have not seen a familiar foe in quiet some time now, were shutdown whenever they were about to ralley. The Mets look to Jon Niese today while the Mets bats will hope to hit off of Ogando.

Niese is 6-6 this season with a 3.70 ERA. Before his last start, he had a streak of 33.0 innings of work where his ERA was 1.91 however in his last start he lasted only 4 innings as he allowed 5 runs, 4 earned. As you would imagine, Niese has never faced the Rangers before as a franchise and the only player on the Rangers he has ever seen before is Torrealba, who is 1-5 against him lifetime.

Ogando is 7-2 this seasonw with a 2.66 ERA. His last two outings were the most consecutive (as in no weeks skippd like he has done a lot this seaosn) and during his last two starts he is 0-2 over 6.2 innings with a 9.45 ERA. You probably guessed this by now but he has never faced the Mets in his career and the only player on the Mets he has ever seen is Paulino, who is 0-1 against him.

Let's Go Mets!

The Mets go into Arlington tonight to start a series with the Rangers after winning a series against the Athletics in Queens. Yesterday the Mets improved to one game below .500 as they beat the A's by the score of 4-1 behind good starting, relieving and hitting. Tonight Pelfrey will take the mound as he faces Matt Harrison starts for the Rangers.

Pelfrey is 4-5 this season with a 4.70 ERA and he is coming off of his complete game outing which was his first since 2008. In his last three starts he has pitched 22.0 innings with an ERA of 2.05. Mike Pelfrey has never faced the Texas Rangers franchise before and has only faced two players on the Rangers. Torrealbla is 1-6 against Big Pelf and Andres Blanco is 1-3.

Matt Harrison is 5-6 on the season with a 3.16 ERA. He's had a good streak of two starts where he has pitched 12.1 innings allowing only 2 ER during that time (however, 5 total runs overall in that span). Harrison has only been in the league since 2008, and has never faced the Mets. The only players who have faced Matt are Jason Bay who is 1-3 and Paulino is 1-1.

Let's Go Mets!

The Mets face the Athletics this afternoon for the concluding game of this series. Oakland took the first game of the series and rallied to tie the second game of the series in the top of the ninth. The Mets would go on to win the thanks to a walk-off hit by pitch in the bottom of the 13th, which I guess is the universe's way of showing some pity from the walk-off balk loss from last week. Today's game will feature a common feature from most games in the last week, where the two starting pitchers have very little to no experience against the teams they are facing.

Chris Capuano is 5-7 this season with a 4.29 ERA. In his last three starts he has pitched 19.0 innings with a nice 1.64 ERA. Chris, a National League pitcher, has never faced the Oakland Athletics franchise and has only faced two batters on the Athletics. Conor Jackson is 2-12 in his career against Chris, both hits being homers while Josh Willingham is 4-8, with one homer. Besides that, he will be new to this Oakland lineup.

The Mets bats will get a surprise when they face Graham Godfrey who will be making his third major league start of the season. So far he has pitched 11.1 innings in 2 games while allowing 7 runs, 6 earned (4.76 ERA) on 15 hits (two homers) and 2 walks while striking out 5. As you would expect, there is no one on the Mets who has seen Godfrey in his short major league career.

Let's Go Mets!

The Mets look to bounce back from last night's loss tonight with a win against the Oakland Athletics. The only bright spot in yesterday's game was Jason Bay who hit his third homer of the season, and his first in 104 AB as he slowly starts to turn his season around and maybe give this offense a jolt that it needs. Tonight R.A. Dickey gets the nod for the Mets as he takes on Gio Gonzalez of the Athletics.

Dickey is 3-7 this season with a 4.00 ERA. He had a nice string of starts going for over a month where he pitched 32.1 innings with an ERA of 1.67 but stumbled in his last start against Atlanta where he allowed 6 ER in 4.0 innings of work. In his career against the Athletics, he is 1-4 with a 6.49 ERA, so he'll look to improve on those career numbers tonight. The Athletics have the following numbers on RA:

Crisp 2-8

Matsui 3-6, 2 2B

Barton 1-5

Sweeny 4-6, 2B

DeJesus 1-5

The Mets batters will get a look at Gio Gonzalez tonight, who is 6-5 this season with a 2.69 ERA. He has been more human in the month of June with a 1-3 record over three starts and 24.2 innings posting an ERA of 4.01. As you would expect with a pitcher who broke into the Majors in 2008 and has been in Oakland his entire career, he has never faced the Mets before. The only batter that has seen him is jason Bay, who is 0-2 lifetime against him.

Let's Go Mets!

Not sure how I missed this, but the Bisons repeated one of their best promotions early this month where they donned Star Wars themed uniforms for the benefit of the American Cancer Society. They used the same log as they did last time, with the AT-AT walker as the corollary for the Buffalo Bisons main logo. The rest of the uniform was white this year (black last time) and was made to look like a storm trooper uniform. Nice touch guys, nice touch.

The Mets and Athletics start a series tonight in New York as the Mets look to bounce back from their first losing series since the 29th of May. Tonight the Mets will look to Dillon Gee to continue to be himself as he takes on Josh Outman. For the record, Josh Outman has one of my favorite names for a pitcher of all time.

Dillon Gee is 7-0 this season with a 2.86 ERA. In his last start he pitched 4.0 innings of shutout ball as the rain pushed him out of the game. He is 3-0 in his last four starts as he has logged 26.0 innings with a 1.38 ERA. In those 26 innings, he has only walked 4 batters, while striking out 20, which has a lot to do with the success he has found this season. As you would imagine, since Gee is a rookie, and the Athletics are in the American league, he has never faced Oakland nor has he faced any batters that currently play for Oakland.

The Mets will try to get men on base and not record a lot of outs against Outman tonight (terrible attempt at an unfunny pun, I'm so sorry) who is 2-1 this season with a 3.14 ERA. His last two starts have been good as he has allowed only 3 ER in 13 innings of work including a 7 inning shutout his last time out. In his limited time in 2008, 2009 and this season, Outman has not faced the New York Mets. In addition to that, he has never faced anyone on the Mets.

Another game of mystery tonight for the Mets. Let's Go!

In our last installment, we took a look at the Yankees Jerseys in the Players Signature Series, and today we will finish our journey with the Phillies, who have two players participating in this year's clothing line. After looking at these Jerseys, I take back what I stated yesterday when I exclaimed that the Yankees had the most conservative jerseys of the bunch. Upon further review, or a first view, that honor clearly goes to the Phillies:

Yeah, so these jerseys are a step above a fashion jersey in the crazy department. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but, good job Phillies. Here's a link where they can be seen.

We pick up our tour of the 2011 Players Signature Series line today with the New York Yankees. The Yankees are one of two teams (the other being the Phillies) that had this line last year as well. This season, four players will have jerseys made for them:

The Yankees probably have the most conservative line of the four teams, which is not surprising at all. My favorite one would have to be Posada because it has the logos of the Championships he has won and its the perfect combination of crazy but not too much crazy. If for some reason you want to purchase one of these, they are available here.

The current skipper of the Marlins, Edwin Rodriguez, stepped down this morning. The Marlins have been in a tailspin in their last 24 games as they have lost 21 over that stretch including losing 18 of their last 19 games. Before this all started they were 29-19 and were almost keeping pace with the Phillies however now they are in last place in the division and are 11.5 games out.

The game today was managed by Brandon Hyde, but he hasn't been named the interim manager yet. The Marlins made an announcement they are hoping to move forward quickly, possibly having a new manager by tomorrow. There are a few candidates that are floating around:

Bo Porter: Rumored because the Marlins almost hired him over this last offseason.

Wally Backman: The Mets fan favorite may be interviewed as the Marlins have asked the Mets organization for permission to interview Backman.

Jack McKeon: He's already in the organization, he's tough, and he took over for the team in 2003 and then led them to the World Series.

If I had to bet, I would say Jack McKeon because he is in their organization, and could be moved to the helm quickly.