(Source: fangraphs.com - what's this?)
For everyone who forgot what Jose Reyes is capable of, it took all of five minutes into last night's game for him to make it abundantly clear. Reyes led off the game with a single to center. He promptly stole second, advancing to third on a throwing error by Giants' catcher Mike Matheny. Paul Lo Duca followed with a single to center, scoring Reyes and giving the Mets an early lead (notice the first big downward spike in the WPA graph). At the plate, Reyes had his best game in a long time. He had just that one hit, but he hit the ball hard almost every time up. Most importantly, he wasn't popping the ball up, but hitting ground balls and line drives with some authority, something he hasn't been doing in recent weeks.
Steve Trachsel was on his game last night. He improved his career mark against the Giants to 10-4 with a 2.52 ERA. Duaner Sanchez got the job done. Again. This time he pitched two scoreless innings, and he has yet to allow a run in fourteen innings this season. Meanwhile, Jae Seo is 0-2 with a 7.64 ERA with the Dodgers. Both players will gradually move back towards the mean, but right now this looks like a pretty good trade for the Mets. Conversely, the Kris Benson trade looks even worse than it did at the time, given the Mets' back end rotation problems. But you can't put shit back in the donkey, so we move on.
Some random thoughts:
- Endy Chavez might be a better defensive centerfielder than Carlos Beltran, which is saying an awful lot.
- Endy Chavez might is almost certainly a worse offensive centerfielder than Roger Cedeno, which also says a lot.
- Jose Valentin is just useless. He is obviously being given every chance to fail, and boy howdy is he failing.
- The Mets have yet to draw a walk in San Francisco and rank 13th in the National League in on-base percentage with a .315 mark.
- The good news is that they still lead the league in team ERA (3.25), K/9 (8.02!) and OPS against (.655).