Tonight’s Must-Win Mets Game

Well obviously it’s not a must-win, it’s May 9th and the 31st game of the season!

 

Still, there’s a certain symbolic worth to winning this game.  It’d be a sweep of the defending division champions.  It’d be beating their second ace pitcher.  It’d be answering a losing streak with a bigger winning streak.

 

And it’d put the Mets five games above .500, which is somewhere they haven’t been all season, nor all of last season.  They haven’t been five games over .500 since July 19th of 2010.   This was just after the All-Star Break when they rushed Carlos Beltran and Luis Castillo back and got steamrolled by the soon-to-be World Champion San Francisco Giants at the beginning of their run.

 

The Mets should have a fair shot at this.  Dillon Gee hasn’t quite gotten the results he’d have liked, but he’s getting a lot more swinging strikes than previous years and walking fewer.  This should be a good recipe for retiring the weak-hitting Philadelphia Phillies.  They have Cliff Lee going, but he’s going to be limited returning from injury and the Mets have been beating on the Phillies pen the last two games.

 

So it’s not a must-win game, but it’s still a game you’d really like to see the Mets get.

Back to .500

The Mets came inches away from their third straight shut out as Teixeira’s home run just missed Beltran’s glove.  In fact, that would’ve been an easy fly out in every other ballpark in the majors.

You can't see the new building in this picture because it's blocked by that historic structure Babe Ruth once played in...wait, what?

Now the Mets are back at .5oo and 22-22 on the season.  They played poorly early on, but despite injuries have really settled down.  They’ve suddenly got a very potent bullpen.  That’s not an exaggeration either, their bullpen has been as good as you could want for quite a while now.  Beato’s back to try to continue his scoreless inning streak.  Jason Isringhausen, if they considered relievers for the award, would be on his way to comeback player of the year.   Francisco Rodriguez remains one of the best closers in the game, and may actually be the best this year.

 

The bullpen is meaningless if the starters are going to let games get away, but they haven’t been doing that.  The starters have been keeping them in games.  The offense is crippled without David Wright, Angel Pagan and Ike Davis, but if they can continue to play the way they’ve been playing they’ll find themselves in a very favorable position as those guys trickle back into the lineup.

 

Terry Collins and Sandy Alderson both deserve some credit for what’s gone on.   Collins has this team focused and playing good baseball, and Alderson hasn’t been shy to shuffle the roster around and reward guys that deserve playing time; like Justin Turner.

 

I said yesterday I like the way the Mets match up this weekend, and I stand by that. The Mets can hit Burnett tonight and Pelfrey is a better pitcher than Ivan Nova.  Another series win, and perhaps a sweep, is within the Mets grasp.