Well that sucked.
In the most highly anticipated Mets game since yesterday, the actual events of said game diverted from what could have reasonably been called "the plan". As such, I was wrong about a bunch of things I mentioned prior to the game. Those things included:
Pedro would be awesome
Even when he wasn't popping his hammy and was actually still pitching in the game, Pedro Martinez was something considerably short of awesome. He allowed four runs, four hits, a walk and a hit-by-pitch through the first two innings, digging the Mets a 4-0 hole that seemed insurmountable the way the Mets were swinging the bats early on against Rick VandenHurk. I was understandably optimistic about Pedro's performance heading into the game, but that washed away in a sea of red after he hit Hanley Ramirez and gave up a two-run bomb to Dan Uggla to start the bottom of the first inning. He got out of the first without allowing any additional baserunners, but got the second inning started on a sour note by coughing up a longball to Luis Gonzalez. Four batters later Ramirez tripled in Alfredo Amezaga and the Mets were down a Homer Simpson handfull.
To Pedro's credit, he retired the next four batters he faced before, you know, that other bad shit happened.
Pedro wouldn't get injured
Okay, so this one was really just implied by the previous point and not really something that I explicitly got wrong. Still, I'll man up and admit that I didn't see this one coming, at least not this soon. It was probably wishful thinking to believe that Pedro would make it through the whole season without missing a start, but I thought he'd at least make it to his second outing before going down in a crumpled heap. The early prognoses indicated a hamstring strain, but Pedro later described the injury as a "pop", which usually means really good things (read: really bad things) on the horizon. He will make his way to New York tomorrow to have some magnetic resonance imaging performed and we will all hold our collective breath awaiting the results. The best case scenario is probably a couple of weeks on the shelf. The worst case is a couple of months. I hope.
The bottom half of the lineup would suck
They sucked yesterday, and a little something called "recent historical empirical evidence" suggested that they would continue to suck. But there they were, miraculously not sucking. The bottom four -- Carlos Delgado, Ryan Church, Angel Pagan and Brian Schneider -- combined to go 6-for-15 with four walks (that's ten times on base in 19 chances). Pagan even threw in a sacrifice fly for good measure. By comparison, the top four spots in the lineup went 3-for-16 with three walks (two by Carlos Beltran, who was hitless otherwise).
Some other miscellaneous thoughts...
Aaron Heilman was great, striking out two in two innings and looking unhittable (duh!) in striking out Amezaga and Brett Carroll to end the eighth inning.
- Matt Wise threw a bad pitch. He struck out the first two batters to face him in the bottom of the tenth, got squeezed a little on the first two pitches to Robert Andino, and then served up a floating meatball that Andino -- he of 36 homeruns in 2,810 career minor league plate-apps -- completely destroyed, depositing it into the left field bleachers for the 5-4 walk-off win.
- I was only a little surprised that we saw Wise -- and not Billy Wagner -- in the tenth. I guess on the road Willie Randolph is always looking for a way to get Wagner a save opportunity, and might only be inclined to use him beforehand if the game is going into the 17th inning. It's easy to second-guess, but seemingly just as easy to first-guess.
- These two teams are back at it tomorrow night as Oliver Perez takes on Andrew Miller. Last night's swag contest results are up and they aren't pretty. At your request I will try to post tomorrow's form earlier in the day so you can fill it out without waiting until right before gametime. As always, the latest game form can be found here (also linked on the left sidebar under "AA SWAG CONTEST").