The New York Mets took the opening game of a four-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers with a 5 – 2 victory. Bartolo Colon took the mound and pitched seven strong innings and got the win, upping his record to 5 – 3.
Okay, so let’s recap the moments of the game here:
- Oops, he did it again! Curtis Granderson hit yet another homerun, his 11th, on his first time at bat in a game against Milwaukee’s Jimmy Nelson. Granderson doubled leading off the third and scored on a single by Yoenis Cespedes. It’s Granderson’s fifth time in a season where he lead off the game with a homer. Hey, whatever works for ya, right?!
- Colon held the Brewers scoreless for six innings and in the seventh inning allowed a two-out hit by Hernan Perez.
- Granderson, Cespedes, Plawecki, Reynolds all had RBIs.
- Kevin Plawecki drove in two runs with a single in the eighth to give the Mets a 4-1 lead.
- Matt Reynolds pinch hit and helped the New York Mets to add a run in the ninth.
- Reed and Familia came in to protect the win, with Familia earning his 20th save in 20 opportunities on the mound.
- The Mets gained a game on the first place Washington Nationals and has now moved to 2.5 games behind them.
- The Mets have won 2 in a row now.
Neil Walker took a rough hit to the chest today, getting smacked with a 107 mph off the bat of the Brewers’ Hernan Perez.
“When I got out there, I thought he might have broken a rib,” Terry Collins said.
He left the game and later in an interview said he’s taking it day by day, but that he did experience some lightheadedness.
“I feel OK,” Walker said. “Obviously, taking a liner like that off the chest, I just felt a little weary afterwards. I didn’t quite feel right. Rather than just get back in there, I felt it best to have the doctor see me as a precautionary measure. I got hit in the meat of my chest. When you get a ball close to your heart, close to your rib cage there, you just want to make sure that there’s nothing. I didn’t want to go out there and dive or do something that might aggravate more if there was something going on. Fortunately, he didn’t see anything, any issues.”
Okay, now that all of the fancy statistics are out of the way let’s talk about one statistic that we should be talking about. Some time ago, I talked about how the Mets need to work on reducing the number of men left on base. They still need to work on capitalizing with men on base. They left an ample amount of players on base today. Granted, they had enough runs to win the game, but this number is way too many. Here is where I would normally say ‘you can’t leave that many players on base and expect to win,” but well, they did, so there goes that theory, but still.
Major League Baseball’s First Year Player Draft began today and runs through Saturday, June 11. The New York Mets had three selections on the first night (19th overall, 31st overall and 64th overall). The Mets took Anthony Kay for their roster today and, according to the New York Mets website, Kay is a 20-year-old who graduated from Ward Melville High School, the alma mater of Steven Matz. “He did not follow the exact path of Matz, who signed as a second-round pick out of high school in 2009. Kay instead matriculated at UConn, where he posted a 2.65 ERA this year over 17 starts, with 111 strikeouts in 119 innings.”
Right handed pitcher Matt Harvey takes the mound in the second game of the series against the Brewers on Friday night at 7:10 Central Time. In just two starts, Harvey has showed improvement and brought his ERA down from 6.08 to 4.95. It’s his first start against the Brewers.
He faces right-handed pitcher Junior Guerra who has pitched at least six innings in six of his seven Brewers starts. This year he has a 3.1 ERA.
