Some quick hits to go with your Friday morning Teddy Grahams Breakfast Cereal:
2) Remember Jae Seo? Well Matt Cerrone does and links him to Niese.
3) Great article over at Mets Today which goes through the evolution of the 2010 Mets roster, which has seemed to transform every month or so starting with Spring Training till now. Its fun to look back at some of the ridiculous ideas we were banking on.
4) Meet Cohoon.
It wasn't the best looking game in the world, but the Mets ended up on top as they recorded their 7th win in a row, and swept a team for the third time in four chances. The Mets have now added 6 wins to their road record, in other words they increased their road wins so far on this trip by 75%. So how did they get the win this time?
Once again, it was really due to hitting again. They only scored 6 runs, (making it 32 runs scored now over their last 4 games) but they had a lot of hits (again) as they pounded out 14 of them. The only Mets hitter that didn't have a hit tonight was Jeff Francoeur, everyone else had at least one. In fact, five players had multi-hit games (Reyes, Pagan, Davis, Carter, Tejada). David Wright knocked in a run as he extended his streak of games with an RBI and now has a total of 53 on the year.
The pitching wasn't bad either. Dickey had a quality start by the (slightly better than) books allowing 2 ER over 6 innings but as the game went on he got better on the mound. His knuckle ball started to kniuckle more and he ended up racking 7 strikeouts. Feliciano actually gave up the rare ER. Dessens came on for an effective 8th inning as his ERA dropped below 1.00. Krod allowed a hit and struck out the side in order to record his 15th save on the year.
The Mets will now wrap up this road trip starting a set tomorrow night in the Bronx. Both the Mets and the Yankees are better than the last time they faced each other in May. It should be an exciting series as both teams are playing good baseball right now. Before we get hyped up for tomorrow night, we should enjoy the fact the Mets have swept a team on the road again.
The Mets try to make it 7 in a row and 2 sweeps in a row tonight as they take on the Indians in Progressive Field for the third and final game of this series. Just like in the series against the Orioles, the Mets in this game will get a chance to see a starting pitcher on the other side of the mound they may be interested in trading for. Anyway, the Mets offense has been on fire in the last three games as they have scored 26 runs and they have had an inning in each of three last games where they have scored 5 runs.
The Mets will be starting off with R.A. Dickey who has continued being amazing for the Mets this season. He has now made 5 starts this season where he is 4-0 over 32.1 innings pitched with an ERA of 2.78 and 24 strikeouts. In his last outing, he kept the Orioles guessing as he struck out 8 and got out of a basesloaded jam with no outs by throwing seven pitches (resulting in two strikeouts and a popout). Last year he pitched 2 innings against the Indians who were able to score three earned runs off of R.A. The Indians have these numbers against Dickey:
Jake Westbrook will be auditioning for the Mets starting for the Indians tonight. Jake on the season is 4-3 with a 4.62 ERA. Westbrook in his last 5 games he has a 2-3 record with 31.2 innings pitched and an ERA of 5.12. Believe it or not (actually its not that surprising) there are only two Mets on the roster that have faced Jake. Blanco is 3-10 with 2 2B and Cora has had a plate apperance where he had a sacrifice hit.
Lets Go Mets!
As we continue to tour the ridiculous player design uniforms, we make a stop in the Bronx where America's favorite baseball brand (different than baseball team) joined the experiment that seemed to be born for them. Once again all images are from MLB.com and can be found here, along with other images that were not used in this article.
The Good: The entire set isn't bad, in fact there are some good pieces here. One my favorites is the hip-hop inspired Granderson shirt (although the fact that its corporate robs it of its hip-hop feelings). Actually that is the only piece I like:
Some quick hits to go with your Yummy Mummy Cereal:
2) So apparently the Ranges are not that close to getting Oswalt.
3) The Mets won again last night! That's 6 in a row and 26 runs over the last three games. Also Braves and Phillies won the so the Mets remain .5 games out. However the Mets are now also .5 games out from the Wild Card as well.
4) Chipper may retire after this season.
The Mets brought the home show on the road again tonight as they won their sixth game in a row and their second road series on the road (making 4 series now in a row?). Oh, and that is 10 wins in our last 11 games. While we are talking about streaks, this is the third straight game the Mets have had a 5 run inning in a game. Honestly, there is a reason why teams win games when they score 5 runs in a bunch. The mental ramifcations of one team scoring that many runs in an inning ripples through the rest of the game. It gives that team swagger for the rest of the night.
The star of the night was Angel Pagan. He was 3-5, 2B, SB, R, 3 RBI. But after Pagan the rest of the lineup was great. All of the Mets starters had at least one hit while 4 batters had a multi-hit game. In total, the Mets offense had 14 hits. This also means that in the last three games the Mets have scored 26 runs.
The pitching wasn't half bad either. Niese won his third start in a row while he pitched 7 innings and allowed only 3 runs. Meija then came on, and didn't so well (seriously, it might be time to send him down, stretch out his arm, and get him ready to start either late this season or next season). Dessens then came out for 2 innings and was brilliant. He's been amazing this season, which really surprised me.
The Mets now go for the sweep tomorrow and try to make it 7 in a row. Looking back 5 games ago, it was said for the Mets to be successful this road trip they would need to go 5-1 against the Indians and the Orioles. They now will have at least that and now they can go 6-0. The steam will be necessary as they will go into the Bronx Friday against a very good Yankee squad.
*I have no idea why I picked that picture to lead off this article. Oh well.
The Mets won their fifth game in a row last night and they try to make it six tonight as they take on the Cleveland Indians for game two of the three game set. Last night's game featured some “interesting” pitching but (thankfully) also had some timely hitting. In fact, the Mets have now scored 18 runs over their last two games while hitting 8 homers in their last 4 games. The Mets sound out Niese to the rubber tonight to go toe to toe with Mitch Talbot.
Niese (3-2, 3.61 ERA) is coming off two very good starts since coming off of the disable list. He has picked up winning decisions in each of his last two starts piching 16 innings while allowing 1 ER and 1 BB while striking out 12 batters. What has made Niese effective since coming off of the DL is that he is throwing his curveball for strikes and he is throwing it in a deceptive armslot. At the start of the season, he was effective because of his curve but when he couldn't throw it for strikes, the wheels started to fall off. Niese, being young, has not faced any of the Indians' bats.
The Mets bats will try to continue their recent trends against Mitch Talbot (7-4, 3.69 ERA) tonight. He is 1-1 over his last three starts while pitching 17.0 innings with a 3.12 ERA. The only Mets player who seen Talbot has been Jason Bay. Bay has 2 AB against Mitch with no hits. For the Mets, it will be second game in a row that they have had a limited exposure to the starting pitcher on the opposing team, and hopefully the Mets will be able to get the same result.
Lets Go Mets!
The NFL nicknames the last pick in their draft “Mr. Irrelevant” so this got me thinking about possible successes in the last round of the MLB draft. Who was picked down there and actually made it? Who was drafted, decided to go to college, and really increase their stock (Buster Posey). Here was what I was able to find:
2005: In pick 22 of 27 in the 50th round, the Angels selected Buster Posey. Confused? Well that was before college and Posey would later go on to be drafted by the Giants in the 2008 draft. In that later draft, Posey was drafted 5th overall. In other words he went from pick 1492 to 5. Posey was recently called up to the majors to inject some life into that Giant offense.
2004: He may not be a big name, but a decent major leaguer in Chris Davis was orginally drafted by the Yankees in the 50th round of the 2004 draft. In 2006 the Rangers selected him in the 5th round of the draft. Since then he has played in 3 MLB seasons and so far is a career .250 hitter.
2000: David Murphy was originally drafted by the Angels in the 50th round. In 2003 he was drafted 17 overall by the Red Sox. He has gone on to have a successful career in Texas (since being traded there).
This was as far as I went back because of a pattern that started to form. The only people that really made it to the majors being drafted in the 50th round were the players that were in high school, went to college, and then came back and were drafted high. While some of these names are big, it really shows that although you can find real talent in the later rounds (Piazza round 62), it is very difficult to do so.
