10 Thoughts On Texas Rangers @ New York Mets (Game 67 - Doubleheader Game 1)

Boxscore

As was mentioned yesterday, Trot Nixon isn’t the most powerful outfielder left in the league but he’s better than anything we’re putting out there right now. Honestly, if I have to sign for Church and Nixon over the long haul, I’m in.

The Mets are 32-34, 7 games behind the Phillies for the NL East and 7 games behind the Cardinals for the Wildcard. They are still closer to the NL East toilet (6 games) then they are to the top. This is the second of three against the 34-35 Texas Rangers and the first game of a single-admission doubleheader.

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1) So, I think we’ve determined that the Mets pitchers are the best against teams that don’t take pitches and just swing for the fences. Let’s just face Texas and Houston the rest of the year.

2) It only took until the third inning for the Mets to immediately start playing sloppy defense again. That didn’t take long. And this is after a great play by Delgado.

4) I’ve never actually seen the step to third, throw to first play actually work. Way to get out of trouble.

5) You know, I mentioned at some point how depressing the bottom of the Mets order is when Church and Alou are gone — on the other hand, the bench players and ExExpos keep coming up with more clutch hits than the top of the order. After the bottom of the order managed an incredible string of hitting in the bottom of the eighth to bring the score from 8-2 to 8-5, Jose Reyes immediately popped out to right and Schneider made a horrible decision to try and take home with Castillo 40% chance of not making an out coming up. Running yourself out of the inning with the bases loaded is just one of those things that this stupid Mets team seems to have a great time doing. You can’t use Willieball with slow white guys. It doesn’t work.

6) Watching Heilman, knowing what I now know, I’m just consistently terrified of him letting a guy get to third. If you missed the post earlier, Heilman is really, really bad with a runner on third — OPSA of like 1.200 bad.

7) Echoing back to #5; Castillo hits a bloop single to lead off the bottom of the ninth that would have scored Schneider and kept the inning alive. I understand drawing the throw but the slowest guy on the team trying to score on a ball hit to shallow right is one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in a season of stupid things.

8) And just when I wanted to make a comment of how good it was to see Carlos Delgado start to warm up, he does something like ground in to a double play with the tying runs on base. Goddamit.

9) CLUTCH JAW POWER!!! Ramon Castro pinch hits against a lefty and gets his mandible into one. Sweet.

10) And Easley successfully completes what I usually call the Mets Ninth Inning C-Tease… where they do just enough to excite you and then leave. They seem to do this a lot.

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Well, if I’m blaming the coaching the staff for anything, I’m blaming them for the horrible, horrible decision to run John Schneider on Milton Bradley. Who even has the thought to send a guy who can’t run when the bases are loaded and you need multiple hits? There’s absolutely no reason to send him. The one run doesn’t help. There’s no excuse for it. Stupid, stupid decision and very frustrating.

And, once again, another completely unfair and stupid loss for a starter as the bullpen blows another game for the team. Maine gets the loss but Feliciano allowed 2 inherited and one of his own to score, followed by Joe Smith and Scott Schoenweis allowing 1 each.

The bullpen could have been bailed out of if not for the stupid Schneider play. It’s not to say that the same series of events would have occurred had Castillo came in and faced a different pitcher — but Castillo, Wright, and Beltran all got on in the bottom of the 9th. If Schneider doesn’t run his way out of the inning in 8th and the same things occur, then the game is tied.

Stupid. This team is just stupid.