The Game

The Mets fell to the last place San Diego Padres on Wednesday night, by a score of 4-2. The Phillies defeated the Florida Marlins on the same night, so the Mets retreated back to being three games behind Philadelphia in the NL East division.

Pedro Martinez started for the Mets, and got off to a shaky start. On the very first pitch of the evening, Jody Gerut, just one of many intimidating bats in this unfathomably difficult lineup, hit a solo home run. One out later Brian Giles hit an absolute bomb off the right field scoreboard to make it 2-0 (Was anyone else really surprised to see this? I honestly thought that Giles was no longer physically capable of hitting a long home run.) Amidst the early hole he dug the Mets into, Martinez rebounded quite nicely and would wind up going 6.1 innings, allowing merely six hits and three runs (Just two of which earned). He’d take the loss, but the Mets offense was clearly at fault in this game.

The Mets bats had Cha Seung Baek as their task last night. The same Cha Seung Baek who was cut by the Seattle Mariners earlier this season, and is terrible. However, in common fashion during the 2008 season, the Mets let Baek off the hook in several big spots (16 runners would be left on base in this game), and allowed him to settle into a lengthy groove to earn his 4th win on the season. Mike Adams (Wasn’t he on the Mets at one point?), Heath Bell, and Trevor Hoffman combined for 2.2 innings of scoreless baseball to shut the door, and notch the Padres’ 44th win on the season. San Diego continues their relentless late season run at October baseball, now just 15 games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks. Perhaps some footsteps are now being heard in the desert!

The Mets continue to be a puzzling team. Its becoming increasingly difficult to decipher whether this club is very talented yet underachieving, or just not very good in general. One thing is for sure; teams that make the playoffs do themselves favors over the course of the regular season, and defeat the teams that should be beaten. The Padres, a team that by all means should be beaten, has now won five of six games against the Mets this year. I couldn’t imagine that a team that has so much trouble defeating sub-par teams would have success in the playoffs. Needless to say, Jerry Manuel needs to be fired immediately.

Okay, maybe that was a bit far. But someone on the team flipping over the post-game spread, hurling a Molotov cocktail at a clubhouse assistant, or throwing a garbage can through a window certainly couldn’t hurt team morale.

Tonight the Mets will take on the Padres in the rubber game of this three game series. San Diego has the clear advantage in the starting pitcher department, as Josh Banks will take on Johan Santana. The Padres have a very good opportunity at hand tomorrow, as the D-Backs have an off-day. A gain of even a half game makes all the difference in the world at this point in the season (Yes, I realize that I’ve now completely beaten that joke into the ground).

The Haiku

Pedro: two quick bombs
He settles in; but Wright’s gaffe
Is difference-maker

The Boxscore

The Win Probability Added Graph

The Credits

Recap by Milo Taibi
Haiku by Howard Megdal