Thanks to the Mets vomiting all over the field in both halves of last night’s 11th inning, Philly was allowed to move into a tie for first. Or, more accurately, the Mets dropped out of sole possession of, and into a tie for, first place.

Thanks to the Phils having an earlier start time than the Mets did tonight, when they won their game, they moved up half a game, and now sit alone atop the NL East.

I think we’re all pretty sick of looking at the Phillies’ nasty, crusty mudflaps.

What I do like seeing, though, is when we wind up on the happy side of an inning prolonged by an error, and when we have nine players coming off the field after a bases-loaded, nobody out jam which ends with nobody scoring, instead of the usual four.
So let’s see if we can hang on to win this one, finish the day still in first, and tear the heads off of the Sawx this weekend!

There’s just no other explanation. Right from when Church allegedly missed third.

Either that or Joe Torre has something going with the 3rd base ump. I mean really, you’re in a hole in the ground- how do you even see that from the dugout? From the steps, sure, but down in the pit? He had to have been reading Church’s face. I mean whichever Dodger was covering 3B watched him round the bag and had to be told to appeal the play… Whatever.

They almost got out of that inning, too. A clean throw and who knows?

That was painful.

Oh, well, at least Redding did decently. And Pagan, too, other than that bailout at the end of what should have been a routine flyout. Hopefully they got this junk out of their systems for a while.

On SNY’s postgame coverage, they flashed a bunch of numbers showing how ridiculously good the Mets have been these last two weeks- 10-2 in their last 12, hitting nearly .360 with runners in scoring position, a pantsload of stolen bases leading to a pantsload of runs scored.

Which begs the question: what more could we possibly want?

My answer: Tim Lincecum. When’s his contract up, because I think we should start sending him chocolates or dancers or whatever it is he likes. That was my first time seeing him pitch and I was impressed.

So other than him, what do we want? We can no longer complain that they’re not aggressive at the plate or on the basepaths, or that they’re not scoring runs late in games, they quit early and aren’t able to come from behind, or that they can’t hit with ducks on the pond, or that the bullpen is always blowing leads and/or can’t close the door. They’re playing phenomenal ball lately AND they’re catching a their share of breaks- that ball Wynn hit off the top of the wall, the errant throws by their opponents, the other teams in the division failing to make up ground. It’s getting harder and harder to look at this team and see something that’ll stand in the way of a championship.

So really, all we can ask is for Reyes and Delgado to come back strong, and maybe to see the starters get more run support (it’s great that the team is winning, but if those decisions could go to Johan and Maine instead of Stokes and Parnell, that’s icing on the cake). Speaking of starters, let’s see what Redding does when he gets the call in a couple of days. Honestly, though, El Hermano Del Duque is a formidable #4, and Niese has been an awfully good- and inexpensive- Ollie substitute. If those two keep it up, I’m ok with Omar cutting his losses and eating a huge chunk of Ollie’s salary and dumping him on whomever will cough up a couple of prospects.

Johan vs. Big Unit… Looking forward to that!

OK, let’s play Love Child:

Frankie looks like the love child of Beltran and Ollie.

SNY’s Kirk Jimenez looks like the love child of Marc Anthony and Michael Ian Black.

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.

Seriously, that’s all I’m saying.

Wow, for someone who was allegedly pitching for his spot in the rotation, that sure was an abortion, wasn’t it? I’m glad that the 2-3 innings I did get to catch were on the FAN; I think it would have been too depressing to actually watch.

Just keep repeating the mantra: Shaking the cobwebs loose… Small sample size… Ommmm…