Taking A Deep Breath: A Mets' Weekend Evaluation

The Mets came into Friday night’s game with the Yankees in a tough spot. The Yankees had just been swept by the Red Sox and were now 0-8 on the season against them. They had to be hungry, and for the Mets, they had lost a couple of close games against the Phillies that many thought they should’ve won. It was going to be a true test, and until the bottom of the ninth inning, they had passed the test with flying colors.

If only Luis Castillo had used two hands.

K-Rod did exactly what he needed to. In typical K-Rod style, he made things interesting by putting a pair of runners on. He had two strikes on Alex Rodriguez, and A-Rod popped up behind second. Castillo seemed to have a beat on it, but the ball squirted out of his glove and the Yankees scored twice and went on to win 9-8. I don’t have as much a problem with the drop as I do one other small fact.

Castillo threw the ball to second base. Why?

After he dropped the ball, Castillo fired it to Cora. The only thing I can think of is that he thought Cora could conceivably get A-Rod before the winning run came across, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Castillo had a typical Mets’ brain fart, and he picked the most inopportune time to do it.

After I got home from a night of clubbing in Long Beach, I went on Facebook and noticed all of the status updates. “WAY TO GO METS! CHOKE!” was just one example of what I saw. Typical Yankee fans. They don’t know what the word class means. I wouldn’t mind if the statuses said, “GREAT HUSTLE TEX!” because that was nice to see. He was busting it from the minute the ball was hit and because of that the Yankees won the game. But Yankee fans would rather enjoy our suffering.

And people wonder why I hate the Yankees.

Saturday didn’t look good on paper, but reality was a different story. The Mets had Fernando Nieve going against Andy Pettite, and the unknown Nieve shut the Yankees down. The Mets went on to win by a score of 6-2 in what was a game that revealed some fight and some character.

Sunday was not the same story.

Johan Santana never showed up. After the game he admitted that he isn’t feeling his best, and he showed it Sunday. He allowed a career-high nine runs and the game was out of reach before you could even blink an eye.

At least A-Rod never got a hit.

Next, the Mets will have the Baltimore Orioles in Camden Yards on Tuesday. Mike Pelfrey and Jeremy Guthrie will tango, and the Mets really need to focus on winning series if they want to catch the Phillies. The Orioles are no pushover, and the Mets would not be smart if they treated the Orioles like such. I would sign up for 2-1 right now. Hopefully the pitching can keep up its end of the bargain.

We will see soon.