A Hill Too Steep

There was a chance, albeit brief, when Cliff Floyd stepped to the plate as the tying run in the seventh against Joey Eischen with the bases loaded...

Swing and a miss.

There was a chance, finally, to get away from the dock and establish the Mets as a team that can vault to the next level...

Swing and a miss.

There was a chance, once and for all, to rip the hearts out of the Nationals and make it their last sight as they crumple to the ground and die along with their 2005 playoff hopes...

Swing and a miss...strike three!

There was no joy in Mudville, for the mighty Floyd struck out.

***

Forget the Mets...perhaps Anna Benson should have offered to sleep with the paying customers today as an apology for her husband's pitching performance. Kris Benson picked today to make a mountain out of a molehill as what probably should have been a one run hole turned into a 6-0 Nationals lead before the first inning was over. It was too big a mountain for the Mets to climb as they lost 7-4...despite getting the tying runs to the plate in the seventh (Floyd) and ninth innings (Wright). You knew it was bad for Kris today when Cristian Guzman hit one hard off of him. That Willie Randolph waited two more batters to pull Benson was a bit odd. Guzman and the pitcher getting hits off of Benson aren't enough proof that he doesn't have it?

For their great escape on Saturday night the Mets, even with Benson on the hill against a team whose offense flows worse than a backed up sink, can't escape who they are...a .500 team.

***

But it wasn't all gloom and doom. Mike Jacobs got his first major league at bat against Esteban Loiaza, who has been a Met killer this year (it can be documented, by the way, that I thought way back in November that getting rid of Loiaza was a bad idea by the Yankees...of course they let him go to a Mets division rival to kill them). Jacobs smacked a three run dinger on his first ever swing to cut the gap to 7-3. Jacobs got a deserved curtain call.