6/12 - Luis Castillo's dropping of Alex Rodriguez' pop up in the bottom of the 9th sealed the Mets' fate in what would have been a great win had the ball been caught. All Francisco Rodriguez could do from the mound is hold his head in agony as two Yankees runs crossed the plate. This was K-Rod's firs blown save of the year-hardly his fault at all. Yes, he made things interesting by allowing two runners to reach base but A-Rod's pop up should have ended it. It was a play that major league players should make - no excuses. The Mets are now 4 games behind division leading Philadelphia and can hardly afford to lose more games in this fashion, especially with all of the injuries that have plagued the team this year. All they can do now is try to put this loss past them and hope that Fernando Nieve can give them a good start today and the offense is able to score behind him. Right now the Mets need their complementary players to really pick up some of the slack in the abscence of Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado. They are counting on guys such as Daniel Murphy, Fernando Tatis and rookie Fernando Martinez to take some of the pressure off of David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Gary Sheffield.
For the Yankees, the hope is that veteran Andy Pettite shows that he is as effective against the Mets as he has been in the past and that the offense finds a way to jump on the inexperienced Nieve early in the game and make the Mets go into the bullpen early.
Last night's starters did not have their best showings of the season. Joba chamberlain pitched 4 innings giving up 2 earned runs while walking 5 and striking out 3. For most of the game, the Mets made him throw a lot of pitches and walk in 2 Mets runs. The 2 runs given up came in the 3rd inning where he did not have good command at all. He also had trouble agreeing with catcher Jorge Posada on the signs in the inning which led to more trouble for Joba.
Livan Hernandez ended his night giving up 6 earned runs in 5.1 innings while walking 1 and striking out 1. He left th ball up in the strike zone for most of the night that led to most of his outs bieng recorded on fly balls as well ask 3 Yankees home runs.
The Mets were able to score 4 runs in 0.2 inning off of reliever Brett Tomko who did not have good command at all in his outing. After Tomko left the combinatio of Dave Robertson and Phil Coke were able to limit the Mets to just one run. Robertson had the best outing of all Yankees relievers of the night. Mariano Rivera came in and gave up a rare run on a David Wright RBI double. Rivera was asked to pitch in a very unsual spot for him in the 8th inning with 2 outs.
For the Mets, Jon Switzer was the first man out of the bullpen making his Mets debut. He was promptly greeted by a Hdeki Matsui 3-run homer. The next two relievers, Sean Green and Pedro Feliciano were very effective over the next two innings. Green is pitching his best right now and has shown improvement after a slow start to his season. Francisco Rodriguez came on in the 9th inning with a perfect 16 for 16 record in save chances this yea but it was not to be this time a he watched in horror as Castillo dropped a routine fly ball and that was the end for the Mets on this night.
Again, the Mets deserved a better fate considering the good offensive night they had and the resiliance they showed. Both Carlos Beltran and David Wright contributed 1 RBI each and Ryan Church had his best offensive night in awhile driving in 3 runs including 2 on a double in the 5th inning. Gary Sheffield contributed a 2-run home run as well as the Mets scored 8 runs, one of their best totals ths season. The defense once again let them down and now all they can do is brush themselves off and hope to get wins behind Nieve and the consistant Johan Santana over the weekend.
-M.R.
Whats on tap for tomorrow:
Subway Series game 2
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