213 Miles From Shea

The Mets attempt to sweep, improve to three straight wins and 9 wins out of the last 10 games when they play the Braves tonight in an interesting pitching match up. For the Mets, Pedro will make another start and for the Braves, Hampton will be making a start (finally pitching in New York after all these injury plagued years).

Pedro is doing a lot better now than his season stats let on. His record of 4-3 with and ERA of 4.96 says he's struggling, but you have to look at his more recent stats. In his last three starts, he has gone 1-1 over 19.1 innings with an ERA of 1.86. He's getting stronger and he is locating his pitches. His BB to K ration during that time (8 BB to 10 K, or a ratio of 4:5), is a little high, but I'm sure that will start to go down over time. Last time Pedro pitched against the Braves was in 2006 when he had a 3-1 record over 4 games and 22.1 innings against them. Even though he won a lot, he still allowed 16 runs (a 6.45 ERA). Here are some current Brave stats against him:
    Chipper 9-45, 2B, 3 HR, .200 BA
    Francoeur 3-14, HR
    McCann 2-15, HR
    Kotsay 2-11
    Johnson 0-5
Historically, Pedro has done very well against this line up, Chipper has the best BA against him, and thats at the mendoza line. Hopefully that history, plus his recent surge will help Pedro plow through this lineup tonight.

I am still in disbelief that Hampton is on the mound this year, but anyway, he continues his comeback tonight with a 2-1 record over 5 games and 26 innings pitched. In his last three games, to compare to Pedro's, he is 2-1 in 17 innings pitched with a 5.29 ERA. He has been spectacular, but he has been effective to win and he goes for back to back wins tonight. The Mets however, have hit him well in the past:
    Reyes 7-16, 3 2B, HR
    Tatis 5-12, 2 2B
    Beltran 8-13, 2 2B, HR
    Delgado 5-9, 2 2B, HR
    Wright 1-9
Out of players who have stats against Hampton, Wright is the only one who has struggled. Beltran has been surging of late and Delgado has been declining a bit. If history follows course, they should both have big nights. The Mets seem to see the ball well off of Hampton as their power numbers show it. For example, 4 of 7 hits by Reyes have been for extra bases.
Lets Go Mets! Sweep Atlanta!

If I lived in New York, I would have been watching the Mets game tonight, but I don't so I was watching the national game of the night, which was Tampa vs Angels. The game was very well played (still can't believe that can be said about the Rays) and it was nice to see Floyd playing. When he was with the Mets I always liked him and I often wonder about what his numbers would be if he didn't have knee and other problems throughout his career. ESPN kept on showing him during BP where it looked like he tweaked his shoulder swinging the bat. Anyway, when he swings it almost always look like he is going for the long ball (remember in 2005 when he went yard 34 times? He's got that power.)

The Nationals lost again tonight, extending their losing streak to 12 games, and dropping their elimination number down to 10. On that topic, the Mariners lost tonight as well, combined with an Angles win, their number dropped to 6 and became the second team to have 80 losses.

Baseball Tonight is running a segment about the top 3 players in each franchise.Tonight they did the Mets where Piazza was #3, Strawberry was #2, and Seaver was #1. Strawberry is still the Mets leader in HR, RBI's and R.

A pitcher for Mexico had a big game today as he pitched a perfect game as Mexico rolled to beat Italy 12-0. Since Mexico was leading by over 10 runs, the mercy rule kicked in, so they only played 4 innings. In those four innings, the pitcher who threw the perfect game struck out all 12 batters he saw. Thats amazing, its like a perfect perfect game where the ball doesn't even enter play.

Anything you can do I can do better: The Phillies see Pelfrey's amazing night and raise the Mets Bret Myers and a complete game shut out. This race is heating up and will go right down to the wire. Pelfrey pitched amazing tonight with a three hitter. The Phillies needed to give their bull pen a rest and they got their rest the same way the Mets did. Both teams look to complete sweeps tomorrow.

With tonight's 6-3 win over the Braves, the Mets pick up their 70th win of the year. Pelfrey went the distance as it took him only 108 pitches to complete the game. This was a big night for Pelfrey. He has really matured a lot this season and there are few aspects from this game that show how much he has grown this year:

    1) In the ninth inning, he started off with three straight balls to Chipper Jones. I guarantee you that old Pelfrey would eventually walk Chipper. This Pelfrey came back strong and got a called strike, a foul ball and then another called strike to get Chipper, best BA in the majors, to strike out. (Two of the three strikeouts that Pelfrey had tonight were from Chipper)
    2) He only needed 108 pitches to complete this game
    3) Pelfrey has been horrible against the Braves this year. He could have easily let the Braves get inside his head. He remembered his recent success on the mound and took it with him today.

This was another great game for Pelfrey and is one that really makes me proud, and I assume it makes most Mets fans proud. He continues to lead the pitching staff in wins. The bullpen gets another night off (still can't believe have had CG so close to each other). In other Mets news, Wright continues to close in on 100 RBI's with his 97th RBI of the year and is also starting to close in on 30 Homers for the season. Murphy also got into double digit RBI's during this game as well.

The Mets made a low-risk, possibly nice, signing today when they picked up Al Reyes. Reyes has had some off the field incidents this year and some injury problems, but has gotten his work in over his career. He has pitched in 384 games, has a 23-16 record, 428.2 innings pitched, 32 saves, and a 3.82 ERA. He was only a closer for one year, and has picked up the other saves along the way. Since 2005, here are his yearly stats:
    2005- 65 G, 62.2 IP, 3 Saves, 2.15 ERA
    2006- DNP
    2007- 61 G, 60.2 IP, 26 Saves, 4.90 ERA
    2008- 26 G, 22.2 IP, 4.37 ERA
In my personal opinion the best way to use him is to use him like everyone else in the bullpen. The closer by committee is somewhat working. If it continues to work till September, I guess we stick with it. If it starts to falter, I suggest we pick the best right handed reliever and the best left handed reliever to platoon the closer spot, and only those two. But thats a post for another time. Here are some other Al Reyes stats:
    In Completed Saves – 35.2 IP, 1.77 ERA
    In Save Situations – 83 IP, 5.20 ERA
    In Non-Save Situations – 340.2 IP, 3.57 ERA
Lets hope he can help our tired bullpen and add some stability in that pen, Lets Go Mets!

The Mets aim for their 8th win in 9 games tonight as they play their second game against the Braves in this series. This is the tough game in the series as the Mets have to battle against Jurrjens, who is one of the Braves best starters right now and has been doing well against the Mets this season. Jurrjens has a 3.15 ERA right now. In his last 4 games however, he has gone 1-3 over 26 innings and posted an ERA of 3.81. In April this year, Jurrjens pulled out 2 great starts vs the Mets where he went 2-0 over 13 innings and had an ERA of 2.77. Here are some Mets hitting stats against Jurrjens:
    Reyes: 2-6, BB
    Beltran 1-5, RBI, BB
    Wright 1-5, 2 RBI, BB
The Mets don't hit him well. The key tonight is to get him to throw a lot of pitches, get Jurrjens out early, Any runs on him will be great. To win tonight, the Mets have to light up that bullpen again. Pelfrey will be hoping to get the Mets to the late innings.

Pelfrey has been amazing since May 31st. Since then, in 15 games, he has a 9-2 record, a 3.19 ERA, walked only 24 and has struck out 60 batters. To compare, before May 31st, in 9 games, he had a record of 2-6, a 5.33 ERA, 24 BB and 23 K. In those 9 games were two bad games against the Braves where he went 0-2, in 9.1 innings, a 10.61 ERA, walked 7 and struck out 3. Here are the Braves numbers against Pelfrey:
    Francoeur 3-10, 2B, 3B
    Johnson 3-9, HR
    McCann 6-11, 4 2B
    Chipper 3-7, 2 HR
    Kotchman, Kotsay, Prado 0-9
The key for Pelf tonight is to get through those tough batters and not allow damage. He is a different pitcher since the last time he faced the Braves. He has momentum, he has confidence and now he has to execute it tonight to lead the Mets to victory, and to give the Mets bullpen a rest. 7 innings tonight from Pelf will amazing.
Lets Go Mets! Take this series!

Yesterday the Nationals lost their 82nd game of the season. Mathematically, that means the Nationals have no chance at finishing at .500 this season. They are the first team this season to guaranteed a losing season and, by a surprise, they do not have lowest Elimination number in the majors. The Mariners right now hold that honor with a number of 8, the Nationals are sitting pretty with 12. So a combination of 12 National losses or 12 Mets wins, will knock this team out of the playoff race. Here are the elimination numbers for the last place team in each division:
    AL East: Baltimore 21
    AL Central: Kansas City 21
    AL West: Seattle 8
    NL East: Washington 12
    NL Central: Cincinnati 15
    NL West: Padres 21
In case you were wondering, the Mariners have 79 losses on the season, meaning that they are next in line to be guaranteed a losing season. On the topic of losing woes, the Nationals have loss 11 straight games. Today is also the anniversary of the Phillies breaking their 23 game losing streak in 1961, which is the modern day record. Also on thi same day, the Royals stopped their club-record 13 game loss streak. So the Nationals hope that they can strike on history today. As much as I would love to the Nationals loss streak keep going, as any Mets fan would hope, that the Nats break the streak today and knock the Phillies down a bit.

Living in Baltimore, I mostly get Orioles news. When it comes to fans and the Orioles, the news is usually negative. The front office shows no support, or they do bad PR moves (like that time they kicked a group of fans out of a Orioles/Red Sox game for cheering too loudly for the Orioles). Last night the Orioles tried to correct some relation issues with their fans by congratulating the 50 millionth fan that has paid to see an Oriole game.

The winner last night, Kevin Gracie, received 50,000 dollars and season tickets for 5 years. It's a nice story, he's a law student, had $6 in his pocket at game time. He also got a jersey that has number 50 on it and the name says Millionth Fan on it. Its nice to see the Orioles honor their fans for once, especially when the Red Sox are in town again, and it feels more like Fenway than Baltimore.

Tonight showed the Mets team that we all thought existed at the start of the season. Besides the bullpen, the biggest problem I thought the Mets had this season, especially at the start of the season, was the Mets did not take advantage of situations when they had runners on the base paths in the late innings.

Tonight, the Mets lost the lead and going into the bottom of the eighth, they needed to score at least one run to tie the game. After Reyes got out, the Mets got 8 consecutive batters on base and a total of 11 Mets came to the plate during that inning. Those 11 Mets turned into 5 runs, as the Mets took a nice 7-3 win over the Braves. So the Mets get a key come from behind victory and do it in a big way as they show that their bats can be resilient.

The bullpen was not lights out tonight, but they did not allow runs, which is a great step. Ayala got his two batters out. Heilman struggled a bit with a walk and a hit, but got out of the inning. Schoeneweis finished off the game facing 4 batters in the ninth inning. They allowed hits and a walk, but most importantly, they allowed no runs. Just keep it coming.
Tomorrow is the tough game in the series, Lets Go Mets! Lets keep up the winning ways!

The Mets start a series with the Braves tonight as they try to add on to their division lead over the Phillies. The Braves will be sending starter Jo-Jo Reyes to the mound, who hasn't pitched in the majors for a good bit of time. Due to lack of command, he was sent down the minors for 8 starts where he went 1-1 and posted an ERA of 2.31, showing that he is ready to come back up. Before he left, he went 0-5 in 6 games with and ERA of 8.47. He has never pitched a game against the Mets or any current Mets batter (he was a rookie last year for the Braves). All together on the season, he is 3-9 with a 5.33 ERA but do not let those numbers fool you. His struggles have been at home and not on the road. At home, his ERA is above 7, while on the road, it is a cool 3.61. So one key for today's game is to not expect Reyes to be a pushover due to his recent problems.

The Mets will be sending Oliver Perez to the mound who has been doing well as of late. Since July 29th, he has pitched 4 games with a 3-1 record over 25.2 innings pitched, and ERA of 2.81, 9 BB and striking out 24. He has not faced the Braves this year, but last year he faced them 5 times. He went 4-1 over 32.1 innings, had a nice ERA of 3.03, walked only 4, and struck out 32. Here are some Braves hitting stats against Perez:
    Chipper 7-18, 2B, HR, .389 BA, .542 OBP
    Francoer 7-20, 2 2B, 2 HR, .350 BA
    Kelly Johnson 0-7, 6 K
    Prado 0-7
Chipper knows how to hit, and really knows how to hit Perez. Perez on the other hand, knows how to handle Johnson, who out of 7 AB, has struck out 6 times against Perez. If Perez can continue his ways from the past several starts, he really should have no problems with this lineup.

On the Mets offense side, Reyes and Beltran have both been doing really well the last ten days. Reyes, in 48 AB, has 7 runs, 15 hits (.313 BA), a HR and 3 stolen bases. Likewise, Beltran in 37 AB, has had 7 runs, 12 hits (.324 BA, incredible considering he is hitting in the .270's on the season right now), with 2 homers. They have to keep their offense going strong today to back up Perez and take down this Braves team. Lets Go Mets!

Every once in a while I like to highlight the Baltimore Sun's “Today in History” segment in their sports section. The segment includes a lot of interesting things that happened today during Baseball's history. I am not going to quote all of them, so if you want to see the complete list, and you have a Baltimore Sun, the segment can be found on page 14Z.
    “1909: The Philadelphia Phillies were rained out for the 10th consecutive day, a major league record”
    That is a record in this day and age, will never, ever be broken. (Assuming we are talking about normal rain here).
    1931: Ty Cobb got his 3000th hit
    “1951: Eddie Gaedel, a 65-pound little person who was 3 feet 7, made his first and only plate appearance as a pinch-hitter for Frank Saucier of the St. Louis Browns. Gaedel, wearing No. 1/8, was walked on four pitches.”
    “1957: New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham announced that the team's board of directors had voted, 9-1, in favor of moving to San Francisco”
    “2007: Johan Santana finished with a franchise record 17 strikeouts in eight innings to help Minnesota edge Texas 1-0”

There are some other interesting ones listed. All in all, this segment proves the deep history and legacy of baseball and shows why its history is the best one to follow.