“I’m not going to waste my time arguing with a man who’s lining up to be a hot lunch.” -Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws
When Nathan Eovaldi intentionally walked David Wright, a righty, in the sixth inning to face lefty Ike Davis, he lined himself up to be a hot lunch. Oh he didn’t know it. How could he have? Wright is leading the league in hitting and Davis just got off the interstate … lefty-righty matchups be damned.
Now, if Ike keeps doing what he did in response to that cutesie move, hitting a three run HR to pretty much put the game on ice for Johan Santana (and what would be his eight shutout innings of work), then Wright isn’t going to get intentionally walked for a lefty anymore, will he? And hey, I foretold this … kinda:
“As for Duda and Davis, they actually got the job done in the ninth, tying the game off of Rafael Soriano in the ninth with back-to-back doubles. But they need to do this often enough so that Wright doesn’t get pitched around as he’s been for the last couple of weeks.”
To be fair, I also said at the beginning of the season (not on the blog) that Ike Davis would be an all-star this season. Instead, he’s been awful. (Hard to find a good soothsayer these days.) And while he’s been awful, the Mets went 32-29. Since then, in a stretch where the Mets went 10-6 (albeit streaky) Ike has hit .304 with an OPS of 1.026, five HR’s and 20 RBI’s. That’s not even counting Saturday, a 2 for 4 effort with the three run HR. The intentional walk to get to Davis for his blast make his recent numbers stand out even more … especially since Saturday was the second time since Ike’s hot stretch began that he has batted directly behind Wright in the order.
Do I expect Ike to keep these numbers up? Well I thought he’d be an all-star, didn’t I? So why can’t he? He obviously isn’t going to be an all-star this season. All he needs to do is be an all-star the rest of the season. Sixteen games might be a small sample size. But if he’s truly out of his early season quagmire, and you add him to the big time list on this team of Wright, Santana, and R.A. Dickey, then this season just got a whole lot more interesting than it already was.
And the waters just got a lot more dangerous.
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