Last night Mets starting pitcher Matt Ginter had perhaps one of his best nights as a Met pitching out of trouble in the first inning and then going on to throw 6 scoreless innings.
The Mets took a 3-0 lead into the 7th inning last night on the strength of Mike Piazza's RBI double and the Phillies pitchers walking in 2 runs in the bottom of the 6th inning-all for this seemingly perfect baseball evening to become undone for the Mets in the 7th inning. A combination of relievers Ricky Bottalico & John Franco not being at their best and 3 Met errors in the inning, one very costly one by Mike Piazza at first base throwing an easy double play ball into center field, this after he struck out with the bases loaded and 2 out in the bottom of the 6th. The Phillies had tied the game at that point and then Jim Thome hit an RBI double. The score became 6-3.
Like I have said before this is a Met team where I do not stop watching the game after things like this happen because this team seems to have the spark and fire to come back in the late innings, and in the 8th inning they had a chance, one again the Mets had bases loaded after Chad Utley booted a ball hit by Cliff Floyd, Rheal Cormier was pitching for the Phillies and Mike Piazza had a shot to redeem himself for striking out in the same situation in the 6th (mind you Art Howe finally learned not take Piazza out in the 7th inning even though he's a defensive liability at 1st base!) and for the costly error in the 7th. Cormier issued an unintentional-intentional walk since Piazza has a great hitting record against him and the Larry Bowa figured one run was better than possibly four. Piazza walked making the score 6-4. However the Phillies got another run in the top of the 9th and that was all for the Mets making the final score 7-4.
All in all for a Met fan it was still an exciting game, and there were a few positives: Matt Ginter had an impressive outing, Jason Phillips seems to have broken out of a horrendous hitting slump and is hitting the ball quite well-he was even robbed of homerun by outfielder Part Burrell who jumped up and brought the ball from over the wall. Look even the great 1986 Mets team suffered the worst loss in Mets history giving up 26 runs, so all is not lost with letting this one get away. They still split the short series with the first place Phillies, and had a second winning streak of 4 games up until last night.
On the otherhand centerfielder Mike Cameron's batting average has now dipped below .200, supposedly due to the injury to his pinky he has trouble swinging the bat, especially going to right field I admire his wanting to play through the pain and not wanting to go on the DL, however the injury won't heal if he keeps playing, his batting average has plummeted since the injury in beginning of the month, and I don't feel his defense in cernterfield has been that of someone who MUST stay in the line-up, maybe his defense is suffering because of it also, but I have not been impressed since very early in the season.
His back-up Joe McEwing has a better batting average and that isn't saying much-so Cammy do us & yourself a favor and go on the DL.........
Today is an off-day for the team and then they go to Florida to take on the Marlins for a weekend series.