Friday, July 30, 2004
Mets 10, Expos 1
The Mets had to settle for a split of this four game series against the lowly Expos, but at least they finished it off in emphatic fashion. They had the kind of offensive day they ought to have against the kind of pitchers the Expos were throwing at them and got more than enough starting pitching to make it hold up.
Eric Valent became the eighth Met to hit for the cycle, smacking a monstrous home run off of a speaker hanging from the roof in rightfield. Mike Cameron launched two of his own, giving him twenty on the season. Richard Hidalgo hit his seventeenth. David Wright had a pair of doubles and a walk. Ty Wigginton had three hits. And Kazuo Matsui hit his thirty-first double of the season.
And the beneficiary of all this offense was the league’s temporary ERA leader, Al Leiter. After today’s six-inning start, he’ll have enough innings to qualify for the league lead until Saturday. And he dropped his ERA to 2.18 by allowing just one run on three hits and two walks while striking out one. Leiter always needs some support from his bullpen and his offense to get the job done, given how quickly he runs up his pitch count, but in this game, after 105 pitches, he had a comfortable lead and gave way to Pedro Feliciano and Dan Wheeler, neither of whom allowed a run.
Of course, the big news of the day is that Peter Gammons is reporting that the Mets may be very close to acquiring Mr. Diminished Expectations, Kris Benson, from the Pirates for Ty Wigginton, Matt Peterson and a third player to be acquired from the White Sox. I’ll have more to say on this if and when a detail goes down and all the details are known, but I’ll just say right now that even if this trade were just Wigginton and Peterson for Benson, it would be a bad move and nothing more than a desperate grasp at the playoffs.
Ty Wigginton isn’t likely to be a starter on this team next year unless something goes horribly wrong. Matt Peterson still has a lot to prove and hardly looks like a future ace at this point. But they both look like players who will have value at the major league level for the Mets in the future, and in Wigginton’s case, in the present. Peterson’s value may be as nothing more than a middle of the rotation starter. And Wigginton’s may be just as trade bait for something the Mets actually need. But both of those things would be more useful to the Mets that two months or a few post-thirtieth-birthday years of Kris “4.00 would be a triumph!” Benson. Making this deal might provide an incremental improvement to the Mets’ starting rotation, but not only would that come at the cost of starting either Vance Wilson or Jason Phillips nearly every day in Wigginton’s absence, and perhaps Joe McEwing as well, pending the health of Jose Reyes’s ankle. But adding Benson to this already veteran-heavy rotation might dissuade the Mets from pursuing someone who might actually be a significant upgrade in this offseason, like Matt Clement or perhaps Carl Pavano. Bottom line, adding Benson now seems like the Mets scrambling to add someone, anyone to this team without bothering to consider if he’d actually make the team appreciably better in the short or long term. Making this deal wouldn’t be a disaster, but it wouldn’t be a step in the right direction either.
This weekend the Mets head to Atlanta to battle The Team That Wouldn’t Die. Steve Trachsel (9-7, 3.59) gets first crack at taking the monster out as it sends the reanimated corpse of Mike Hampton (6-8, 4.92) to do battle on its behalf.
¶ joe | 2:00 AM |
The Mets had to settle for a split of this four game series against the lowly Expos, but at least they finished it off in emphatic fashion. They had the kind of offensive day they ought to have against the kind of pitchers the Expos were throwing at them and got more than enough starting pitching to make it hold up.
Eric Valent became the eighth Met to hit for the cycle, smacking a monstrous home run off of a speaker hanging from the roof in rightfield. Mike Cameron launched two of his own, giving him twenty on the season. Richard Hidalgo hit his seventeenth. David Wright had a pair of doubles and a walk. Ty Wigginton had three hits. And Kazuo Matsui hit his thirty-first double of the season.
And the beneficiary of all this offense was the league’s temporary ERA leader, Al Leiter. After today’s six-inning start, he’ll have enough innings to qualify for the league lead until Saturday. And he dropped his ERA to 2.18 by allowing just one run on three hits and two walks while striking out one. Leiter always needs some support from his bullpen and his offense to get the job done, given how quickly he runs up his pitch count, but in this game, after 105 pitches, he had a comfortable lead and gave way to Pedro Feliciano and Dan Wheeler, neither of whom allowed a run.
Of course, the big news of the day is that Peter Gammons is reporting that the Mets may be very close to acquiring Mr. Diminished Expectations, Kris Benson, from the Pirates for Ty Wigginton, Matt Peterson and a third player to be acquired from the White Sox. I’ll have more to say on this if and when a detail goes down and all the details are known, but I’ll just say right now that even if this trade were just Wigginton and Peterson for Benson, it would be a bad move and nothing more than a desperate grasp at the playoffs.
Ty Wigginton isn’t likely to be a starter on this team next year unless something goes horribly wrong. Matt Peterson still has a lot to prove and hardly looks like a future ace at this point. But they both look like players who will have value at the major league level for the Mets in the future, and in Wigginton’s case, in the present. Peterson’s value may be as nothing more than a middle of the rotation starter. And Wigginton’s may be just as trade bait for something the Mets actually need. But both of those things would be more useful to the Mets that two months or a few post-thirtieth-birthday years of Kris “4.00 would be a triumph!” Benson. Making this deal might provide an incremental improvement to the Mets’ starting rotation, but not only would that come at the cost of starting either Vance Wilson or Jason Phillips nearly every day in Wigginton’s absence, and perhaps Joe McEwing as well, pending the health of Jose Reyes’s ankle. But adding Benson to this already veteran-heavy rotation might dissuade the Mets from pursuing someone who might actually be a significant upgrade in this offseason, like Matt Clement or perhaps Carl Pavano. Bottom line, adding Benson now seems like the Mets scrambling to add someone, anyone to this team without bothering to consider if he’d actually make the team appreciably better in the short or long term. Making this deal wouldn’t be a disaster, but it wouldn’t be a step in the right direction either.
This weekend the Mets head to Atlanta to battle The Team That Wouldn’t Die. Steve Trachsel (9-7, 3.59) gets first crack at taking the monster out as it sends the reanimated corpse of Mike Hampton (6-8, 4.92) to do battle on its behalf.
¶ joe | 2:00 AM |
