Hey, look at the ballee.
All right, so it's not exactly Jose Reyes stealing home like he wanted to ... and I'm sure he would have liked to pull it off while the league was wearing Jackie Robinson's 42 (I hear that later in the homestand the Mets are holding Mo Vaughn night ... and Kevin Appier is throwing out the first pitch), but being the second runner to score on one wild pitch is something I would consider "close enough". It's sure as hell rarer than stealing home.
Tonight had to be some sort of rarity, where five Met runs scored on either wild pitches, sac flies, or double plays (is it me or is Gary Sheffield having a hell of a time getting around on a breaking ball much less a fastball?) You might consider the Mets 7-2 win an ugly victory. I on the other hand ...
No, that was pretty ugly. But it still counts.
The ugly part, in actuality, was all the attention on the continuing outfield adventures of Daniel Murphy. First, a runner tags from first on a fly ball to Murph ... a smart play by Scott Hairston knowing who was in the field. Then, going to third on the Murphy throw that handcuffed David Wright. And at this point you're probably thinking "oh great, every SNY camera is going to be trained on him for the rest of the night."
And then you realize: "S**t, the game is on ESPN too." Poor Murph.
Throw in the first Padre run, a single to left which an outfielder would have had a real chance to throw out Luis Rodriguez at the plate. An infielder in outfielder's clothing? Eh, not so much, as he threw the ball like he was holding second on a double play. As the kids like to say: "It's a process." But that doesn't mean that Daniel Murphy's defense isn't going to be scrutinized from now until the end of time (or until he robs Scott Rolen of a home run in the NLCS and turns it into a double play.) Welcome to your life, Danny Murphy.
Hopefully the process is coming to an end for Oliver Perez, who turned in a quality start on Wednesday against an opponent not named Phillies, Yankees, or Braves. Imagine that. Guess Dan Warthen's 'round the clock supervision is finally paying some dividends for Ollie. Or perhaps there's a Shake Shack burger on the top of every staircase in Kitti Field to entice Ollie to get his running in. Whatever works.
(Stupid World Baseball Classic.)
5 comments:
Ollie last night: 6 innings, 3 hits, 1 run, 2 walks.
Derek Lowe last night vs. Florida:
5 innings, 7 hits, 4 runs, 5 walks.
Fair is fair...
the murphy situation is a really scary one. you give the guy a pass when he drops the routine fly that cost us the game against the marlins because it's the type of thing that happens to everyone now and again. but last night he looked totally clueless on a number of occasions. he better turn out to be pete rose if this is the type of defense we can expect from him on a day-to-day basis
It's nice that Jose paid tribute to Jackie Robinson. But it was really Luis Castillo who was channeling Jackie on that crazy play with the passed ball. If Luis did not barrel into home like an All-American football player, Jose would not have gotten his chance to score.
850, yes ... fair is fair. I'm going to wait at least a month to do the whole "comparison" thing. I'll be honest with you, Oliver still scares me in the same way that disaster movies, clown faces, and Mama's of Corona running out of cannollis in the sixth inning scares me.
I'm still trying to figure out how the Mets built an $800 million dollar stadium with a disproportionate number of seats with poor sight lines. Can the 100or so people who have called Francesa's show to complain about this really all be Yankee fans impostering dedicated life-long Mets fans? I'm going tonight, so I guess I'll see for myself, but I am not encouraged.
I also think putting a statue to honor Tom Seaver outside Citi Field, to assuage all the “Dodger-centric” grievances, would be a good idea.
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