Did I just see Ollie pitch himself out of jams?

Is it true that the Mets hit home runs- at home- to come from behind and win a game?

Have they really strung three wins together against better-than-.500 teams?

Am I actually posting again?

The answer to all of those is, well, it appears so… let’s see how long any of it lasts- I’m hoping for the best.

On a serious note, they’ve set up a fund for the 22-year-old who got beaten to death outside of Citizens’ Bank Park; apparently his parents need the money for the kid’s funeral and one of the guys who was with him when he died hasn’t told them that he’s trying to raise money to help them out.

It’s a great cause and what a way for Mets fans to show we’ve got more class than Philly fans want to admit we do ;-)

http://www.davesale.bbnow.org/

It’s all right, Ken. You gave up a solo homer, no big deal. Everyone does it- shoot, we’ve come to expect it. We’ll forgive you… as long as you go back to pitching the way you had been.

It was a tough loss (wasn’t it, Mr. Putz?), but I’m taking it as a good sign that this team fought all the way to 12 innings in that one. Speaking of extra innings, it was quite a night for free baseball, eh? That Texas game looked about as exciting as the team itself has been (we may just see them in their first WS this year), and the walkoff Granny out in Minneapolis… to win at home like that after 13 innings- must have been a great game to see in person. Too bad all home teams couldn’t have won in extras yesterday.

Enough about that, though- I looked at the replays of Tuesday’s close call of Beltran’s steal of third multiple times, and Mets fan or not, I think the ump made the right call. There’s one angle from which it looks like Beltran slid into Chipper’s glove before touching the base, and one angle which looks like he had fingers on the bag when he made contact with the glove. From where the ump was standing, though, it was way too close to call, and the tie goes to the runner.

Speaking of umps, what on Earth was homeboy in Minnesota THINKING when he put his arm around Magglio Ordonez to try to steer him back to the dugout after calling him out? If it had been the other way around and Ordonez tried to guide the ump somewhere, he’d have been rung up faster than a pregnancy test a couple of weeks after Prom. That umpire needs to be suspended.

On the other end of the spectrum, kudos to the Orioles’ bench for springing up to make sure (Devil) Ray Carlos Pena didn’t break his neck when he flipped over the dugout railing to make that amazing catch. There was a time when guys would probably have let an opposing player seriously F himself up in a similar situation.

Oh, and my condolences to Ryan Zimmerman, whose truly impressive hitting streak ended at 30 flippin’ games.

Anyway, let’s see what happens in San Fran tonight!

Friday: 7 runs, 7 LOB.
Thursday: 7 runs, 7 LOB.
Wednesday: 1 run, 5 LOB.
Tuesday: 4 runs, 9 LOB.
Monday: 6 runs, 6 LOB.

This streak: 35 runs scored, 41 LOB, 6 wins.

Compare to another six-game stretch.

4/18: R: 1, LOB: 8. (win)
4/19: R: 2, LOB: 10. (loss)
4/21: R: 4, LOB: 12. (loss)
4/22: R: 2, LOB: 7. (loss)
4/23: R: 8, LOB: 7. (loss)
4/24: R: 4, LOB: 13. (win)

Runs: 21, LOB: 57, 2 wins, 4 losses.

See what happens when you hit with men on base? Whatever the Mets have been doing lately, I hope they keep it up. Granted, they hit a soft spot in the schedule when the Somalis… err, Pirates rolled into town, but how often have the Nationals sucked and still given us grief? (Answer: when have they NOT sucked?)

More scoreless ball from Taka-hot-sheeyit, another fine start from Maine (who’s keeping pace with Big Pelf in the “I wanna be the #2 starter” contest), and there is no complaining about the offensive onslaught we saw.

Belated Kudos to Niese for last night’s effort, btw.

So it’s looking great so far… especially with the Braves up on the Phils 6-2 in the 8th- we may just take sole possession of first place within a few minutes!

To put that in perspective, the Mets’ record right now is 16-13. The 2000 Mets were 16-13 at one point and were only in second place, five games back. They wound up going to to win 94 games and made it to the World Series.

Ya Gotta Believe!

…then you’re made of wood.

MetsBlog linked to a great story posted on Mets Police just in time for Mother’s Day.

I must admit, I got a little misty, especially when I got to the pictures.

Enjoy, and if I don’t post until after Sunday, Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who loaned (or are loaning) your wombs to someone while they tried making it into this world… even if you gave birth to a Phillies fan ;-)

Does Sean Green’s ERA go up or down tonight? I think the fate of tonight’s game is directly correlated…

UPDATE: See? No earned runs surrendered; Mets win. I think that actually makes it inversely correlated, right? ERA goes down, Mets go up…

Whatever it is, heckuva job, Greenie!

Beltran’s playing like a Most Valuable Puertorriqueño. Delgado’s going the other way against the shift. David Wright’s hitting with men on and is maintaining an average above .300. Frankie’s 9-for-9 in save situations (including the last four games in a row!). Big Pelf is like “What’s that? You need someone to step up and be your #2 starter? Boom, I’m 4-0, including these last two starts against the Phillies. How ya like me now?” And #57 is out there looking like Cy Young should have been competing for a Johan Santana award.

Does it get any better?

Yeah, Reyes can get hot, Ollie can start earning his friggin paycheck again, and Sean Green can get his mojo working or get his bag packed (for real, we’d probably be better off with Shawn Green out there).

But we, being Mets fans, are used to taking it where we can get it, so being half a game out of first place today after being 5 games back two weeks ago is a nice start. It’s looking OK as of right now- the Pirates aren’t exactly turning the league on its ear, so to have them roll into town while we’re heating up is nice… Philly’s hosting the Braves, and that could probably go either way, and the Flukes… I mean Marlins (I knew it was a fish) are going out to Colorado, which might actually be good for them, what with all the pop their lineup has. So we’ll see.

I’m watching the Fast Forward replay of last night’s game, BTW, and that interference call on Reyes was BS. Oh, and I saw some of the postgame earlier- anyone else think Frankie sounds like Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite? Whaddya call that new pitch you’re working on, K-Rod? “Iss a Sledgehammer.”

Elsewhere… I misunderstood when they said Manny tested positive for a band substance- I thought they meant that “the cream” and “the clear” were cork grease and valve oil. Where my saxophone and trumpet players at? Band geeks in the hi-ouse!

Then I misunderstood Joe Girardi when he said it was “hard for [him] to see baseball have so many black guys…” Turned out he actually said “black eyes.” Oops!

Finally, I’ve got to say hats off to the NYPD officer who caught Matsui’s home run ball at Yankee Stadium last night and gave the ball to the kid. That was a classy move… like something Norman Rockwell might have painted. Stuff like that keeps me from giving up on humanity altogether.

After a couple of games that were pretty much blown because of defensive miscues (though I gotta say, I’ll take a couple of those over a leaky bullpen anyday), it was nice to see Good Ollie show up today and contribute to the first of what, God willing, will be a long list of wins at CiFi.

Other than Dr. Jeckyll notching his first win, other things about tonight’s game that made me happy were Delgado going the other way in the face of the shift then later reaching way down to mash one halfway to Rhode Island, the heads-up home half of the 7th (great plate discipline, nice job by Castillo getting the bunt down, and Reyes scoring from first on a stolen base and three craptastic throws), and, last but not least, getting to see the lovely Mrs. Robinson at the dedication of the Jackie Robinson rotunda. Here’s a link I found which points to a fascinating chronicle of the color line and MLB.

I didn’t realize Delgado was so close to career home run #500… they showed a graphic during the game saying that nobody had ever hit #500 in a Mets uniform… it’s cool how we have two players who could potentially do it this season.

Looking forward to Maine vs. Peavy tomorrow… should be a tough contest.

First the good news: the Mets’ offense scored another six runs and the bullpen was once again being stingy.

Now for some optimism: Ollie doesn’t make a mistake to Votto and maybe, just maybe, the Mets win that one 6-5.

What’s done is done, it’s April, there are still 159 games to play, and other than an outing that went crappy when the wheels came off Ollie’s cart, things are looking pretty good for the Mets.

I’m just pissed that the Marlins opened the season against the blasted Natties. Of COURSE they’re gonna start out 3-0 and ruin our chance at going wire-to-wire.

Whatever. They’ll learn to lose this weekend, won’t they?

Although it was just an exhibition game, if the Mets’ Citi Field debut is any indication of what’s in store for us this season, this is the year we’ve been waiting for.

Livan Hernandez looked much better than a 5th starter, the offense put up a few runs, and the 8th and 9th innings were handled by JJ Putz (nice hustle to cover first!) and K-Rod (who looked positively SICK!) exactly how we’ve envisioned them doing so- we may just have a bullpen we can trust to not blow 30 games.

I can’t help but think that it’s going to be a truly memorable season- this time for good reasons!

So I turn on SNY to catch a little of the Mets’ exhibition game against the Red Sox, their first game in the new stadium (which, btw, looks even more awesome on TV than it did in pictures- or in person from the outside), and what do I see trailing across the ticker at the bottom of the screen?

“Mets sign OF Gary Sheffield”

My first thoughts were, “how much did Omar overpay this time?” and “I didn’t realize Sheffield was Latino.”

So I went over to the computer to check it out, and according to the good people on Metsblog (snazzy new WordPress theme you have there, Matt), the deal is that Sheff will have to work for his playing time and that he’s only guaranteed $400,000. They say he’s regarded by former teammates not as a clubhouse cancer, but as a good teammate.

After taking all of that in, my next thought was, “welcome to Flushing, Mr. Sheffield!”

Seriously, how bad a deal can this possibly be? Not Mo Vaughn bad. Not Moises Alou bad. And not as bad as signing Pedro for his asking price could wind up being (of course he could also wind up being worth every penny he winds up getting; you just never know with Pedro anymore, which is a shame because I would have loved to get another season out of him almost as much as I would have loved to have seen Piazza on the 2006 roster).

If Sheff’s not committed to winning, he gets his $400k and his walking papers. If he is, though (and I can’t imagine anything else being the case), all I can say is that I’ll definitely be looking forward to seeing him come up in the late innings with ducks on the pond.

He’s sitting at 499 career homers- what better way to ingratiate himself to the Flushing Faithful than to hit #500 in a Mets uniform?

We shall see…