213 Miles From Shea

The Mets are taking there 2.5 game lead into Atlanta, facing the Braves. The Braves, who are in a bit of a struggling streak right now, have won 4 of the 6 games aganst the Mets this year.

One of the strong points of the Mets last year was their dominence over the Braves.

If the Mets sweep, which is not necessary, they will have a winning record agaisnt the Braves, but its more important to just keep winning series.

Jorge Sosa will face the Braves for the second time in his carear, as the Mets will try to hit Davies, who has owned them in one start this year.

Well not necessarily own, he did allow two solo shots, and the Mets left a ton of batters on base that day.

Tonight is the first game in a series of games that should be fun, with Perez going tomorow and another Glavine/Smoltz matchup on thursday. AND ALL OF THEM ARE ON TBS! WOOOO OUT OF MARKET MARKETS!

David Wrights Homerun yesterday was hit the opposite way…and against the wind.

Texas leads the majors with homers in May, 31 of them, and has 61 on the year…and they are in last place in their divison.

So they are now saying that Sosa has homered in 45 different parks because he homered at Disney's wide world of sports.

On mlbtraderumors.com, there is a report that Billy Bean would bring Ricky Henderson back for one game in September as long as it not harmful in anyway to the team

D. Easely has hit 7 homers in 74 AB so far this year.

Between the years 97-99, each year Easely having more than 527 AB's, he hit 22, 27, and 20 homers repsectivily.

He only had two other seasons between 92 and 07 where he had more than 10 homers, 2000 and 2001 where he hdad 14 and 11.

From 04-06, he hit 9 homers each year. He had over 180 AB's each of those years.

In 2004, he had 223 AB, roughly 3 times as much as this year, and 9 homers, and if he hard around that many AB's this year, he should have around 21 homers, which would be the first time since 99 having over 2000 homers. Any way you look at it, he is having much better year than expected.

On another note, earlier this season he had his 5000th AB.

I'm also working on another project that I thought I would have done by today but It doesnt look like that. Its the composition of a winning team, trying to correlate different offensive stats and wins.

So its 42 games into the season.

So far the Mets have stolen as a team 50 bases in 59 chances. Thats a team average of around 85%. It also means that the team is stealing an average of 1.19 bases a game.

In the power department, the Mets have 43 Homers, thats an average of 1.02 a game.

The Mets have had 413 hits this season, an average of 9.83 per game, They have also had 212 RBI's per game, which is 5.04 per game.

Enough with that Math, on to tonights game. For the yanks, they do not have more than a few players with more than 4 ABs agaisnt Maine, and Posada has a homer. No one has faced Clippard, for the Yanks

A big stage for Clippard tonight. The Mets already have the colors for the Empire State Building. Lets Go Mets

After the game yesterday, I was with a Yankee fan (a yankee fan in Maryland? No way). So, like I said yesterday, I was doing a lot of trash talking, especially because we just picked up a copy of the Daily News which ranked Reyes better than Jeter…and I happened to be wearing a Reyes shirt.

For tonight, there were will be a lot of eyes on Jeter. Jeter is a carear .360 agaisnt Glavine, including two homers.

Yankees.com is claiming that Rasner is ready for the Mets because in his last outing, he had to pitch with Ichiro on base. (alluding to Reyes and everyone else on the Mets who runs). Rasner has been pitching long relief for the Yanks, with an ERA around 3.28. The only Met who has really faced him would be Easely who is 1-2 agaisnt him.

In other news, the Nationals cooled down last night, as they were beaten by the Orioles, who are no where near great themselves.

The Oriole fan in me hates saying this, but, lets go redsox…

This was a quote on Mets.com today from Scott Schonewies:

“Friday is the biggest game in New York, Saturday's the biggest in the nation and Sunday's the biggest in the universe.”

That gets my blood flowing, I live for rivalries

Delgado has a .362 agaisnt Pettite, and has 10 walks. Pettite has a 3.39ish ERA agasinst the Mets. Perez has faced the Yanks twice in his carear, once a Padre once as Pirate.

Some other numbers, the Mets are 80-83 in interleague play, and 22-32 agaisnt the Yanks. Piazza and Floyd both have the most amount of homers in Interleague Play, 8 each. Lieter holds the victories, ERA, and strikeout records.

So I got home around the time the top of the ninth was starting. Since it was the cubs, I thought there was a good chance that the game would be on WGN, and it was.

So at first I was depressed, because the Cubs were at bat, and up 5-1. But I am optimist, so i had hope for the bottom of the ninth

AND IT WAS AWESOME.

No need to go over details, now for another ancedote

I was in Bmore City earlier today, and I passed Camden Yards. I went in because why not, it looks awesome game or no game. I started talking to one of the ushers, we were obvisily talkin about the back to back 2-1 style games teh O's dropped.

We agreed that for Orioles fans, they at least have teh Yankee misery to take pride in..which is really sad.

I know some people dont like the hype around the Yank/Mets series, but I love this series. I have a lot of close friends that are Yankee fans, and for years, especially in 2000, we had a lot of trash talkin, so I love this time of year

There were not many people during the offseason that were excited with Green coming back to play Right Feild. Afterall, that half year with Nady went extremely well, and he seemed to be a real good surprise player.

This year I have been following Nady, because he is on one of my fantasy teams. So this might be surprising (but from the point of this article, you probably have already figured out the answer):

Who has more homers, RBI's, hits, and average?

SHAWN GREEN!

Who has one more homer, five more RBI's, 21 more hits, and hitting around 80 points higher than Nady.

I do not expect this all season, but its a nice cycle to be in right now, especially with the rest of the offense waking up.

Tonight the Mets will bout with Hill, who was and still is a very strong starter for the Cubs this season. He had a lot of trouble in last start, but I do not expect that to continue, and he should be good tonight. He did not play the Mets last year. He has one start agaisnt the Mets where the Mets hit him up for 7 runs over 1.1 innings. Reyes had 2 AB during that start and had 2 hits, and 2 SB.

The Mets have Sosa who has two starts that went into the seventh inning. He will try to remain the last Met with no losses tonight.

Im also very interested in seeing David Wright and how he does tonight. He had a bit of a streak going, and last night he went 0-4 with 2 strikeouts. It should be a sign of whether or not Wright will work in streaks this season.

Well the Mets play the ace of the Cubs staff tonight.

It always feels like whenever the Mets play someone that is struggling, the pop out of it agaisnt the Mets.

Zambrano was effective agaisnt the mets last year. This year, he really hasnt been effective. Mainly, his problem is home runs. ENDY is 5-14 agaisnt Zambrano, and has a triple and homer. Pinella thinks the problem is the delivery, so he will be using a new one tonight.

I love games with Reyes and Chavez, the amount of speed is awesome. There is plenty of speed behind them with Wright as well. Its a lot of fun to watch.

John Maine last year had 7 innings of shut out ball agaisnt the Cubs. However, this lineup looks much different with their old guys getting protection now from some new heavy hitters. Soriano has two homers agaisnt Maine. But thats all he has agaisnt Maine in 13 ABs

Lets start off with the Nationals…who were so close to a no-no tonight. Besides Hill, Bergman is their best pitcher, so its nice to see something go right for them…well only when it involves knocking down the Braves.

So that gave the Mets control of their destiny. And they siezed it in the bottom of the ninth with a walk off walk. It is still exciting, and really demorlizing for the Cubs, which is great cause we play them tommorow.

Glavine wasnt sparlking, but he settled down after teh second inning (except for that bases loaded jam that he got out of). DWright was very good with the bat, and it just feels good to be a mets fan.