Sunday, June 10, 2007
One win is better than none
A Mets starting pitcher was bound to have a bad day eventually. Jorge Sosa shutting out the best offense in baseball for eight innings on Friday only served to tempt fate. The Mets' offense showed some signs of life, scoring as many runs in each of the last two games as they did in the entire Philadelphia series. Still, what may be the Mets' toughest two weeks of the season did not get off to a promising start.
After Sosa's gem, Oliver Perez and Tom Glavine both got smacked around. Perez gave up five runs in five innings and Glavine was charged with nine in four and a third. Neither got any help from their bullpen as Guillermo Mota and Joe Smith had particularly bad weekends. Mota has pitched five times since returning from his suspension with three good outing and a pair of disasters. His 7:2 K:BB ratio is nice, but the eleven hits he's given up in 6.1 IP are less pretty. As for Smith, perhaps his heavy early season workload is catching up to him a bit as he's allowed at least two base runners in his last four outings. He's seemed unhittable at times this year, but far from it this past week.
The offensive ineptitude of the past week was a total team effort and so was the turnaround in the last two games of this series. Seven starters had hits in each game, though David Wright did lead the way with three hits, including two home runs, and a pair of walks in the two games. Wright has raised his slugging percentage fifty points to .511 in the last six games with eight hits including four home runs and a double. Unfortunately, he is the only Met slugging over .500 aside from Ricky Ledee, who had a very un-Newhanlike weekend, going two-for-seven with two doubles. Shawn Green did not return to the team this weekend, but the Mets sent Ben Johnson back to New Orleans on Sunday night, so Green will likely be back on Monday.
From Detroit, the Mets (36-25) fly to Los Angeles, after which they'll head back to New York as part of the MLB scheduling department's continuing assault on their sanity. The Dodgers (35-28) also lost two of three this weekend and five of their last six. Someone will have to win these three games, so why not the Mets? Orlando Hernandez (3-1, 1.94), John Maine (6-3, 2.78) and Sosa (6-1, 2.64) will give it a shot. Randy Wolf (7-4, 4.03), Hong-Chih Kuo (0-1, 4.85) and Brad Penny (7-1, 2.26) will provide the opposition. The Mets are hitting .320/.379/.475 against lefties this season, so perhaps they will be able to keep up the hitting against Wolf and Kuo. ¶ joe | 11:24 PM |
A Mets starting pitcher was bound to have a bad day eventually. Jorge Sosa shutting out the best offense in baseball for eight innings on Friday only served to tempt fate. The Mets' offense showed some signs of life, scoring as many runs in each of the last two games as they did in the entire Philadelphia series. Still, what may be the Mets' toughest two weeks of the season did not get off to a promising start.
After Sosa's gem, Oliver Perez and Tom Glavine both got smacked around. Perez gave up five runs in five innings and Glavine was charged with nine in four and a third. Neither got any help from their bullpen as Guillermo Mota and Joe Smith had particularly bad weekends. Mota has pitched five times since returning from his suspension with three good outing and a pair of disasters. His 7:2 K:BB ratio is nice, but the eleven hits he's given up in 6.1 IP are less pretty. As for Smith, perhaps his heavy early season workload is catching up to him a bit as he's allowed at least two base runners in his last four outings. He's seemed unhittable at times this year, but far from it this past week.
The offensive ineptitude of the past week was a total team effort and so was the turnaround in the last two games of this series. Seven starters had hits in each game, though David Wright did lead the way with three hits, including two home runs, and a pair of walks in the two games. Wright has raised his slugging percentage fifty points to .511 in the last six games with eight hits including four home runs and a double. Unfortunately, he is the only Met slugging over .500 aside from Ricky Ledee, who had a very un-Newhanlike weekend, going two-for-seven with two doubles. Shawn Green did not return to the team this weekend, but the Mets sent Ben Johnson back to New Orleans on Sunday night, so Green will likely be back on Monday.
From Detroit, the Mets (36-25) fly to Los Angeles, after which they'll head back to New York as part of the MLB scheduling department's continuing assault on their sanity. The Dodgers (35-28) also lost two of three this weekend and five of their last six. Someone will have to win these three games, so why not the Mets? Orlando Hernandez (3-1, 1.94), John Maine (6-3, 2.78) and Sosa (6-1, 2.64) will give it a shot. Randy Wolf (7-4, 4.03), Hong-Chih Kuo (0-1, 4.85) and Brad Penny (7-1, 2.26) will provide the opposition. The Mets are hitting .320/.379/.475 against lefties this season, so perhaps they will be able to keep up the hitting against Wolf and Kuo. ¶ joe | 11:24 PM |
