On the (W)right Track

Does it get any better than this? The Mets continue to demonstrate that they are the class of the National League East. Braves dominate the Mets? Braves won seven of nine this year? Guess not. Better luck next year Braves.

The Phillies fall another game back, and now face the Dodgers, while the Mets face the Astros. The Dodgers are a better team, but their records aren’t that far apart. Then the two teams meet up for two next week. There are no real goals; just play better than the Phillies do. I’d like them to finish with the Phillies and be further ahead then they are now.

This was one of those games where you almost expect the Mets to drop one. They’ve been hot, they can’t win them all, Pedro can be hit or miss sometimes, and the bullpen hasn’t blown a game in a couple of days. Instead, the Mets pull one out, and now have Santana on the mound tomorrow. It doesn’t matter that it’s against Oswalt.

Now only are Ace’s supposed to stop losing streaks, but they’re supposed to string together winning streaks. All of a sudden the Mets have another winning streak, and Johan has a chance to make it longer. The Mets are on pace for 90 wins for the first time in ages. Johan on the mound, an emotional walk-off win, coupled with the return of Ryan Church, and the Mets will be rolling tomorrow night.

Things have to be looking bad for the Phillies. They lost ground despite playing the Nationals and winning two of three. They’re going into another four game series against the Dodgers, against whom they were swept recently. Could the Phillies fold under the pressure and go away so soon? Only time will tell.

E. T. Phone Home

Tonight reminded me of the movie E.T., when E.T. and Elliot are both in the hospital and seem to be linked. The link is broken and Elliot begins to recover, but E.T. doesn't, being out of his element. So went tonight.

After eight innings of baseball, the Mets were deflated by Billy Wagner giving up the game tying home run, and Chase Utley drives in the tying run in the top of the 9^thin Florida for the Phillies. Things seem as bad as they could be, but then that link is broken and the Phillies to whom first place is as alien as Earth was to E.T., will soon be back where they belong.

The Marlins storm right back and set the Phillies down with a walk off grand slam. The link has been broken and it takes a little time before the Mets recover, in the bottom of the 13^th, with Beltran's sixth walk off home run of his career. Beltran's last walk off two run home run was against those very same Phillies back on May 23^rd of 2006. This was a long time ago, back when players like Steve Trachsel were still on this team,but we've been looking for turning points all season and maybe all the symmetry associated with this win is what they truly needed.

There was energy, determination, fight, and all sorts of good qualities during this game. Don't forget that Castillo was on base and Beltran at the plate because of a fielding error at third base, so the Mets were capitalizing on errors too. Beltran also had a key two-run single, on a clean line drive to center, earlier in this game to start the scoring. This hit also came after an error charged to Brandon Webb allowed Castillo to reach base after Reyes got the call from the ump on a close play at first. You take what breaks you can get and do the most with them.

Team chemistry? It's something that's not easy to tell from the outside, but teams that don't like each other don't pass out papers with formulas to make the playoffs. Do you think fans could stop getting on Carlos Beltran? The guy is great, I don't know where we'd be without him. He had a little power outage, and he had a little bit of a struggle getting runners in from scoring position lately, but so did everyone. Beltran is as vitally important to this team right now as Wright and Reyes.

Wagner's blown save may have been a punch to the stomach as Gary Cohen said, but Carlos Beltran coughed up the disappointing start to the season and booted it out of the ballpark in the 13^th.

Where's the Spark?

I'm as frustrated as the next guy. I'm just thankful there aren't too many angry pessimists reading this blog, harassing me. I don't think firing Willie is the answer, but at this point I don't think there is much the Mets could try that I wouldn't accept.

The one thing I hold on to, is last year I felt like had that horrible September been earlier, and had the Phillies played better, the Mets would've been able to snap out of it. It just came too late for them, and I feel like they're really letting the pressure get to them.

They need to find a way to succeed, and then once the pressure is off, move on. This might boil down to getting some lucky bounces and having some bad teams make mistakes to cause them to have some big comebacks and big winning streaks. Maybe a big (June 30th, 2000) comeback is what they need to say, "Alright, we can do this." and do it. Or maybe they need to lose some players/coaches/managers. Or maybe they need to be 20 games out in mid-august and have a crazy run once they've been counted out.

Maybe they need to just lock out the media for a day or two and focus. I'm still not panicked, but lately that's more because I know the Phillies and Braves aren't that good/healthy than because I like how the Mets are playing.

New Theory

I have a theory that the 2008 Mets will win a game for each time Metsblog.com has a Johan Santana related post.