213 Miles From Shea

Subway Series part 2 starts tonight as the Mets play a road game in the Bronx. The Mets come into this game winners of 11 of their last 12 games and the Yankees come into this game winners of 7 of their last 10. The Yankees find themselves tied right now for the division lead of the AL East while the Mets find themselves a half game out of first place in the NL East.

Takahashi will look to build off of his last start tonight as he faces the Yankees for the second time this season. Overall on the season Takahashi has a 3.48 ERA with a 5-2 record. He was on a struggling streak but last weekend in Baltimore he pitched 7 innings while only allowing one run on his way to a Mets win. His first major league start was against the Yankees (and also against the same starting pitcher for the Yankees) and he was brilliant in that game pitching 6 scoreless innings while striking out 5 and walking only one. The Yankees have these stats against Takahashi:

The Mets will get another crack at Javier Vazquez (6-5, 5.43 ERA). The last time they faced, Vazquez was really struggling on the season however he turned out a great performance against the Mets where he pitched 6, 1-hit, shutout innings. He is 3-0 over his last three outings pitching 21.0 innings with a 2.57 ERA. The Mets have these numbers on Javier:

Lets Go Mets!

Some quick hits to go with your Friday morning Teddy Grahams Breakfast Cereal:

(via Depressed Fan)

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:

The Jerseys: There are four of them. They are all ridiculous: