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Game 113 - Mets

Mets 9, Padres 1
Record: 58-55

Ha ha! Totally suckered the Mets in on that one. Talked them up with lofty language about a new beginning on Tuesday, and Pedro got peppered while the lineup frittered away baserunners galore. Sighed pathetically with utter indifference and bleak resignation yesterday, and last night they registered a nine-spot at pitcher's park Petco while Kris Benson demonstrated the form that led Peter Gammons to misread him as the next big thing. Just so easy.

Benson's fine outing was worth discussing at length, but I won't. All that needs mentioning is that Pedro told him to quit tilting his head, he listened, and he reminded the Pad Squad why they were the only division leader under .500 as of a week ago. He went into the ninth, stumbled just a tad, and Danny Graves came in to relieve him, i.e., hock the shutout in one at-bat. Nice, Danny; we'll get to you in a second, but let's keep the mood positive for now.

Here's a question: when are teams going to learn not to intentionally walk someone to get to David Wright? It's happened quite a bit in the past few weeks alone. Last night Brian Lawrence (under the guidance of Bruce Bochy) intentionally walked Cliff Floyd to get to Wright. It's not that dodging a bat like Cliff Floyd's is foolish, and gaining the platoon advantage is usually wise, I get that. It's just that doing so to get to the killing-the-ball D.W. (pronounced Dee-Dub) just isn't working out for teams these days. Three-run dinger, game out of reach.

Gotta run to meet my blogging cohort to discuss some administrative matters. We'll be looking for the next big MLC concept at the bottom of pint glasses. Wish us luck.

Oh, and Mr. Graves, I haven't the time or inclination to delve into your prodigious amount of putrescence today, but that day may be coming. While the flotsam of bullpen-implosions past seems to have washed up on other beaches as treasure (David Weathers is having a respectable year in Cincy, Mike DeJean is proving he's just a second half kind of guy, and Dan Wheeler is almost dictating that we serve crow down at the MLC cafeteria), Danny Graves is the same piece of soggy driftwood they dumped in the Ohio River not long ago. He's been far from effective, unless you count "defective" as being close to effective. If he's smart, he'll start asking Pedro for some delivery tips, and fast.