I went to my fourth game at Citi Field this year, and saw my fourth Met victory. None of the games was even close: 5-2 over the Braves, 7-3 over the Dodgers, 8-0 over the Phillies and now 6-1 over the Marlins. The starting pitchers for the four victories: John Maine twice, R.A. Dickey and Jon Niese. How can this be happening?
After seeing Ike Davis’ first home run a few weeks ago, I got to see him go 4-for-4 today. Ruben Tejada hit a double high off the left field wall and David Wright homered.
But the biggest news was Jon Niese, both for what he accomplished and who he replaced on the roster. When Niese is healthy and pitching well, the Met rotation looks a whole lot stronger.
And when Oliver Perez is off the active roster, the whole team looks a lot stronger.
Though I must admit I even more pleased to see Gary Matthews Jr. gone, since Jerry Manuel was actually using Matthews in important spots, while Perez was safely tucked away in the bullpen.
I watched the postgame later and heard that three teams supposedly have asked MLB to look into whether or not Perez has a real injury. So baseball looked the other way on steroids for years, tolerates huge mistakes by umpires rather than expand instant replay, and more than one team actually complains about whether or not an injury was faked? Crazy. But if the Mets can’t produce a physical injury, they’ll just have to go the mental route.
My friend David and I are 0-2 when watching the Mets this year in a sports bar, but we did a lot better in person. David’s friend Susan met up with us at the game. I had met Susan at a game last year and it was great to see her again. David and Susan also went to Opening Day together, which means that Wright has homered in every home game they’ve attended this year.
On our way into the stadium, we ran into Met bloggers (and newlyweds) Ed Leyro (Studious Metsimus), Taryn “Coop” Cooper (My Summer Family) with, of course, Joey. Squawker Lisa and I had the pleasure of meeting Ed and Joey last year at a Met game, and now I was meeting Taryn for the first time.
With all these nice people at the game, free Mets sports bags, and a sunny day after dire weather forecasts a couple of days ago, everything was in place for a great afternoon. And the team with the best home record in baseball didn’t let us down.
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