Big win for the Mets tonight. A real morale booster. Especially when Jimmy Rollins hits a homerun, talks trash around the bases,and almost injures Cora again. Let's go out there and nail Hamels tomorrow.
I left the TV for a moment and missed j-roll's homer. What did he do when he crossed the bases? and whats this about a near Cora injury?
I despise j-roll, and tis is just another reason to hate his guts if it has to do with him being even more of a showy, overrated punk than he already is.
Also, I would like to add a comment about Rollins' take out slide on Cora in the 9th inning to break up a double play and keep his team alive.
I have no problem with that play. Rollins did exactly what he should have done in that situation and it is a perfectly clean play. The umps made the right call by not calling intereference and letting them play. There's nothing wrong with physical baseball, it's a rivalry and that should be embraced by baseball not punished.
However, I seem to remember the umps not being quite so lenient to a certain Marlon Anderson in May of 2007. Does anyone else remember that game? I was fuming. After a similarly back and forth Mets game, with the Mets trailing by 1 with 1 out in the 9th inning and runners on the corners, a grounder was hit that was going to be tough to turn 2 on but the Phils tried it because they had no choice. Marlon Anderson was throw out at second, but did a very well executed takeout slide on Rollins which broke up the double play and allowed the tying run to score from third...until Anderson was called out for intereference. If you watch the replay what he did is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to what Rollins did in the 9th last night. That single, terrible call cost us the game, and that season as you all painfully remember we went on to miss the playoffs and lose the division to the Phillies on the final day of the season BY 1 GAME! can you imagine how different our lives might have been had that BS intereference call not been made on Anderson 2 full years ago? We'd have entered the final game 1 game up in teh standings instead of tied, meaning Glavine would have had much less stress and probly wouldnt have bombed the start. Even if he had, we'd have forced a 1 game playoff with the Phils, which we could have won. And after that who knows? A WS title? more confidence heading into 08, changing that outcome as well? its amazing what a difference 1 call in 1 game can make, which is why I so agree with instant replay I baseball. Seeing Rollins do the exact same thing that anderson did to him and get off scott-free makes me a little irked at the unfairness of it all.
Nope, I don't remember that one at all but impressive detail recall.... That would be like expecting Mets pitchers (or anyone else) to get the same strike zone that Maddux, Smoltz and Glavine got for a decade or more. Calls are simply not uniform.
Submitted by robsafuto on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 22:34.
It's funny that when Johan Santana was very sharp the Mets had trouble scoring enough runs. Now that he's been off the offense is showing up, which is good for Johan's W-L record and good for the team. I'm glad to see the offense come home and score some runs. I do hope that Johan gets back on track next time out.
Winning the first game of this series was a very big thing indeed. We're still not 100% without Jose Reyes in the lineup so the power from Beltran, Wright and Church was very welcome. Would be nice to see Ryan Church come out of his funk and get him moved up behind David Wright in the batting order.
There's no downside now with the goal for the series of not getting swept. Now that that can't happen, play loose, roll the dice, be aggressive on the bases, etc.
I think last nights game proves just how much each of these teams raise their level of play and intensity and focus for the occassion when they play each other, which makes this the best rivalry in baseball right now. Last night was a very fun game to watch with lots of great defense, lots of homers, lots of intensity, and a slim margin of victory. I was on the edge of my seat until the final strike.
Citi Feild averages 1.5 homers per game; last night there were 7 hit, a new record for the park (the previous record was 5, also set when the Phillies came to town earlier in the year). That is a big difference between the Phillies and the Mets this year, the power. They lead the NL in homers, and despite our big batters we are near the bottom of that category. When Delgado and Reyes return we should improve there, but still I think a big part of our lackluster performance w/RISP has to do with the lack of the long ball in our games. We have one of the best team Batting Averages in the game, but we're not capitalizing on getting those guys on base as much as we should be because we're not hitting the ball out of the park with any consistency. Beltran, Wright, and Church provided the power for us last night, which was enough to get the W. Church got the honor of being the first man to ever hit the homerun apple, which was fun to watch.
We'll face a tougher challenge tonight with Cole Hamels on the hill, but I dont see any reason we cant sweep or at least win this series to gain momentum in both the standings and our rivalry.
Let's not forget that this is our first shot at Hamels since his trash talk about the Mets' being "choke artists." Let's hope the intensity shows up tonight.
1st and 2nd, none out in a tie game against a come-from-behind team that just came back from a 4-1 deficit and we bunt with the bottom of the order coming up. That is not the aggressiveness we needed.
Submitted by robsafuto on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 22:27.
Maybe "situational hitting" is a better phrase. As we go to the 10th inning tonight the Mets have 4 runs and 15 hits. How is it possible to get 15 hits and score only 4 runs?
Submitted by robsafuto on Thu, 06/11/2009 - 10:13.
So far the Mets are winning the war against the Phillies this season. We're 4-2 against them but anyone who watched the game last night knows that we should be 5-1. There are so many reasons why the Mets should have won last night. There were lots of missed chances with runners on base. The Mets left 16 stranded. If just one more were to score before the end of the 9th the Mets wind.
Then there was the David Wright error with the bases loaded. David has gotten hot at the plate lately but he gave back something to the Phillies last night by missing a dribbler to 3rd base that should have resulted in Ryan Howard being forced out at the plate. Instead of 2 outs there was only 1 and the run scored. The next run scored on an out which should've been the 3rd out. That's two runs that could've been avoided. Carlos Beltran also dropped a long fly to the center field wall on the play before the Wright error. The Beltran play was a tough one and lot more forgivable than the Wright play.
So even though we're still leading the season series that doesn't matter to me as much as the fact as we missed an opportunity to gain a game in the standings. And with the team in the situation the Mets are with injuries each win is a precious one. I guess that's why last night's loss felt like losing the series.
We can redeem by winning tonight. I don't care what the pitching matchup is. The Mets need to show some fight and beat the Phillies.
Submitted by robsafuto on Thu, 06/11/2009 - 20:38.
I don't remember that game but what's more remarkable is the fact that the Mets had a good record at the time compared to what they had done in past years. We've had some real battles with the Phillies over the years. I heard last night that only 8 times have both the Mets and Phillies had winning records in the same season.
It was a pretty brutal game. I think I remember Keith Hernandez has a pretty thorough retelling of it in his first book.
As for battles with the Phillies, I'm still bitter over that miserable 5-game sweep at Veterans Stadium in 1980(?) when the Mets were just starting to not completely suck and was the first taste of a Mets pennant race I'd ever had. I vaguely recall Von Hayes killed us that series. Don't even ask me how we came to have a 5-game series.
OK, let's see, we had a 3-1 lead, of course, which, also of course, has disappeared into a late 3-3 tie. Is any of this surprising? Now it's that waiting for the shoe to drop feeling that I hate.
Submitted by robsafuto on Thu, 06/11/2009 - 21:34.
The Mets are laying down again. This happens way too much. Score runs early and then go to sleep. We've also been a victim of suspect defense yet again tonight. And a word on David Wright. He has been very hot lately from a statistical perspective. But he has been hitting a lot of singles and has gotten thrown out (either stealing or trying for an extra base) in some key situations. It's a really strange streak he's in. Without Delgado present (and with Sheffield fading fast) we really need more power from David Wright.
Reminds me a lot of his big hitting streak last year where he was basically in a slump but picking up a single a game. The weakest hitting streak I've ever seen. Now he's the weakest league leader in hitting I've seen.
There's your shoe drop. What by the end of September has to be seen as the tie-breaker game in a crucial series...the kind that determines if we're going to hang with Philadelphia or wind up 5-6 games back and ride injuries into obscurity...gets handed over on a silver platter whenever we bring in these B-level Japanese/Korean pitchers we keep signing one after another with the same results. He gets all of one out and then the 3-run bomb. Perfect, just perfect. I'm just glad I'm not watching it live.
Then bottom of the tenth....Philadelphia would start getting singles, doubles, 1st and 3rd this and that. We get a single, then it's a popup, FC, the usual nonsense.
Coming out and winning the first game of the series, i thought we had a big chance to stick it to the Phils and prove that just because we're injured doesnt mean we're going down without a fight. We could have easily tied the division! we had the opportunities. we got on their starting pitching early and got good pitching of our own, but in the end the long ball was just too much for us to match. The phillies hit homers. They get clutch hits. We dont, and our bats go silent late in the game. It's pathetic and incomprehensible to me that we can be so SOFT that we constantly get out to an early lead, then blow it. It happens in our games due to poor hitting late and w/RISP, it happened in this series by winning the first but dropping the next 3, and it happens in our seasons. injured or not, THIS NEEDS TO STOP!
I know but the worse thing is i don't think anyone can be surprised by this it has happened all season so far. If we are tied with teams going into the 7th inning i expect us to lose. The Phillies are probably the best team in baseball at the moment and in all of these games we should have won. Last nights was the worse that was inexcusable that we didn't win that one.
The problem now is we are going to homer friendly Yankee stadium and not hitting home runs. We need to atleast win 2 games there to stay with the Phillies.
When you combine the Mets' struggles at the plate late in games with the Phillies' resiliency to come back you end upm with one of the most one sided match-up in baseball. Every single person in Citi Field last night knew the Mets weren't gonna get it done in extras. The Phillies have power, the Mets don't Period.
vs. 
Take That!!
Big win for the Mets tonight. A real morale booster. Especially when Jimmy Rollins hits a homerun, talks trash around the bases,and almost injures Cora again. Let's go out there and nail Hamels tomorrow.
What happened?
I left the TV for a moment and missed j-roll's homer. What did he do when he crossed the bases? and whats this about a near Cora injury?
I despise j-roll, and tis is just another reason to hate his guts if it has to do with him being even more of a showy, overrated punk than he already is.
Rollins' Take Out Slide
Also, I would like to add a comment about Rollins' take out slide on Cora in the 9th inning to break up a double play and keep his team alive.
I have no problem with that play. Rollins did exactly what he should have done in that situation and it is a perfectly clean play. The umps made the right call by not calling intereference and letting them play. There's nothing wrong with physical baseball, it's a rivalry and that should be embraced by baseball not punished.
However, I seem to remember the umps not being quite so lenient to a certain Marlon Anderson in May of 2007. Does anyone else remember that game? I was fuming. After a similarly back and forth Mets game, with the Mets trailing by 1 with 1 out in the 9th inning and runners on the corners, a grounder was hit that was going to be tough to turn 2 on but the Phils tried it because they had no choice. Marlon Anderson was throw out at second, but did a very well executed takeout slide on Rollins which broke up the double play and allowed the tying run to score from third...until Anderson was called out for intereference. If you watch the replay what he did is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to what Rollins did in the 9th last night. That single, terrible call cost us the game, and that season as you all painfully remember we went on to miss the playoffs and lose the division to the Phillies on the final day of the season BY 1 GAME! can you imagine how different our lives might have been had that BS intereference call not been made on Anderson 2 full years ago? We'd have entered the final game 1 game up in teh standings instead of tied, meaning Glavine would have had much less stress and probly wouldnt have bombed the start. Even if he had, we'd have forced a 1 game playoff with the Phils, which we could have won. And after that who knows? A WS title? more confidence heading into 08, changing that outcome as well? its amazing what a difference 1 call in 1 game can make, which is why I so agree with instant replay I baseball. Seeing Rollins do the exact same thing that anderson did to him and get off scott-free makes me a little irked at the unfairness of it all.
Marlon Anderson
Nope, I don't remember that one at all but impressive detail recall.... That would be like expecting Mets pitchers (or anyone else) to get the same strike zone that Maddux, Smoltz and Glavine got for a decade or more. Calls are simply not uniform.
One down...
... two to go :)
Super Sized Victory
It's funny that when Johan Santana was very sharp the Mets had trouble scoring enough runs. Now that he's been off the offense is showing up, which is good for Johan's W-L record and good for the team. I'm glad to see the offense come home and score some runs. I do hope that Johan gets back on track next time out.
Winning the first game of this series was a very big thing indeed. We're still not 100% without Jose Reyes in the lineup so the power from Beltran, Wright and Church was very welcome. Would be nice to see Ryan Church come out of his funk and get him moved up behind David Wright in the batting order.
not getting swept
There's no downside now with the goal for the series of not getting swept. Now that that can't happen, play loose, roll the dice, be aggressive on the bases, etc.
7 homers?
I think last nights game proves just how much each of these teams raise their level of play and intensity and focus for the occassion when they play each other, which makes this the best rivalry in baseball right now. Last night was a very fun game to watch with lots of great defense, lots of homers, lots of intensity, and a slim margin of victory. I was on the edge of my seat until the final strike.
Citi Feild averages 1.5 homers per game; last night there were 7 hit, a new record for the park (the previous record was 5, also set when the Phillies came to town earlier in the year). That is a big difference between the Phillies and the Mets this year, the power. They lead the NL in homers, and despite our big batters we are near the bottom of that category. When Delgado and Reyes return we should improve there, but still I think a big part of our lackluster performance w/RISP has to do with the lack of the long ball in our games. We have one of the best team Batting Averages in the game, but we're not capitalizing on getting those guys on base as much as we should be because we're not hitting the ball out of the park with any consistency. Beltran, Wright, and Church provided the power for us last night, which was enough to get the W. Church got the honor of being the first man to ever hit the homerun apple, which was fun to watch.
We'll face a tougher challenge tonight with Cole Hamels on the hill, but I dont see any reason we cant sweep or at least win this series to gain momentum in both the standings and our rivalry.
Hamels
Let's not forget that this is our first shot at Hamels since his trash talk about the Mets' being "choke artists." Let's hope the intensity shows up tonight.
starting pitchers
Pelfrey doubled? I wonder when the last time was that Mets starting pitchers doubled in consecutive starts.
And ESPN had the Phillies as something like 64/36 favorites pre-game. It's 0-0 in the 3rd and the Mets are 63/37 faves? Uhhhh, ok.
OK, now 1-0, but still...
Energy
Love the energy and the passion between Pelfrey and Utley right now! And Utley grounds out. Take that, punk:)
ugh
1st and 2nd, none out in a tie game against a come-from-behind team that just came back from a 4-1 deficit and we bunt with the bottom of the order coming up. That is not the aggressiveness we needed.
Clutch Hitting Again
Maybe "situational hitting" is a better phrase. As we go to the 10th inning tonight the Mets have 4 runs and 15 hits. How is it possible to get 15 hits and score only 4 runs?
I was wondering the same thing
Not scoring in the last 7 innings won't get it done either against a comeback team.
One Loss That Feels Like Three
So far the Mets are winning the war against the Phillies this season. We're 4-2 against them but anyone who watched the game last night knows that we should be 5-1. There are so many reasons why the Mets should have won last night. There were lots of missed chances with runners on base. The Mets left 16 stranded. If just one more were to score before the end of the 9th the Mets wind.
Then there was the David Wright error with the bases loaded. David has gotten hot at the plate lately but he gave back something to the Phillies last night by missing a dribbler to 3rd base that should have resulted in Ryan Howard being forced out at the plate. Instead of 2 outs there was only 1 and the run scored. The next run scored on an out which should've been the 3rd out. That's two runs that could've been avoided. Carlos Beltran also dropped a long fly to the center field wall on the play before the Wright error. The Beltran play was a tough one and lot more forgivable than the Wright play.
So even though we're still leading the season series that doesn't matter to me as much as the fact as we missed an opportunity to gain a game in the standings. And with the team in the situation the Mets are with injuries each win is a precious one. I guess that's why last night's loss felt like losing the series.
We can redeem by winning tonight. I don't care what the pitching matchup is. The Mets need to show some fight and beat the Phillies.
it could be worse....24 years ago tonight
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI198506110.shtml
I still remember riding home in the car listening to the car radio stunned that night.
I don't remember that game
I don't remember that game but what's more remarkable is the fact that the Mets had a good record at the time compared to what they had done in past years. We've had some real battles with the Phillies over the years. I heard last night that only 8 times have both the Mets and Phillies had winning records in the same season.
the game
It was a pretty brutal game. I think I remember Keith Hernandez has a pretty thorough retelling of it in his first book.
As for battles with the Phillies, I'm still bitter over that miserable 5-game sweep at Veterans Stadium in 1980(?) when the Mets were just starting to not completely suck and was the first taste of a Mets pennant race I'd ever had. I vaguely recall Von Hayes killed us that series. Don't even ask me how we came to have a 5-game series.
game 3
OK, let's see, we had a 3-1 lead, of course, which, also of course, has disappeared into a late 3-3 tie. Is any of this surprising? Now it's that waiting for the shoe to drop feeling that I hate.
Folding Again
The Mets are laying down again. This happens way too much. Score runs early and then go to sleep. We've also been a victim of suspect defense yet again tonight. And a word on David Wright. He has been very hot lately from a statistical perspective. But he has been hitting a lot of singles and has gotten thrown out (either stealing or trying for an extra base) in some key situations. It's a really strange streak he's in. Without Delgado present (and with Sheffield fading fast) we really need more power from David Wright.
Wright
Reminds me a lot of his big hitting streak last year where he was basically in a slump but picking up a single a game. The weakest hitting streak I've ever seen. Now he's the weakest league leader in hitting I've seen.
Going With Takahashi
The decision to go with Ken Takahashi against Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez defies logic. Left handed hitters have a .440 average versus Takahashi.
aaaaaaaaaand there we go
There's your shoe drop. What by the end of September has to be seen as the tie-breaker game in a crucial series...the kind that determines if we're going to hang with Philadelphia or wind up 5-6 games back and ride injuries into obscurity...gets handed over on a silver platter whenever we bring in these B-level Japanese/Korean pitchers we keep signing one after another with the same results. He gets all of one out and then the 3-run bomb. Perfect, just perfect. I'm just glad I'm not watching it live.
Then bottom of the tenth....Philadelphia would start getting singles, doubles, 1st and 3rd this and that. We get a single, then it's a popup, FC, the usual nonsense.
Very Dissapointing
Coming out and winning the first game of the series, i thought we had a big chance to stick it to the Phils and prove that just because we're injured doesnt mean we're going down without a fight. We could have easily tied the division! we had the opportunities. we got on their starting pitching early and got good pitching of our own, but in the end the long ball was just too much for us to match. The phillies hit homers. They get clutch hits. We dont, and our bats go silent late in the game. It's pathetic and incomprehensible to me that we can be so SOFT that we constantly get out to an early lead, then blow it. It happens in our games due to poor hitting late and w/RISP, it happened in this series by winning the first but dropping the next 3, and it happens in our seasons. injured or not, THIS NEEDS TO STOP!
Annoying
I know but the worse thing is i don't think anyone can be surprised by this it has happened all season so far. If we are tied with teams going into the 7th inning i expect us to lose. The Phillies are probably the best team in baseball at the moment and in all of these games we should have won. Last nights was the worse that was inexcusable that we didn't win that one.
The problem now is we are going to homer friendly Yankee stadium and not hitting home runs. We need to atleast win 2 games there to stay with the Phillies.
Very bad match-up
When you combine the Mets' struggles at the plate late in games with the Phillies' resiliency to come back you end upm with one of the most one sided match-up in baseball. Every single person in Citi Field last night knew the Mets weren't gonna get it done in extras. The Phillies have power, the Mets don't Period.
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