Losing Streak Applesauce: Strasburg Tops Santana Ahead of Day Off

The Mets lost their first series of the season yesterday, dropping the rubber game against the Nats 4-0. Johan Santana and Stephen Strasburg both struggled with their control early on in this one as they had very high pitch counts over the first few innings. Both pitchers had to work around first inning baserunners, but both would settle down and begin to rack up the strikeouts. Larry Vanover had a strange one behind the plate yesterday. Both pitchers felt they were getting squeezed in the early going, but by the time both starters had departed they were looking at a combined 17 strikeouts in 11 innings of work. Terry Collins was also tossed for arguing an absolutely dreadful called strikeout of Jason Bay. The box can be found here, and here are several recaps for you to take your pick from:

ESPN, MLB.Com, NY Times, Daily News

David Laurila at Fangraphs had a Q&A with top prospect Matt Harvey up yesterday. It's got an awful lot about the various adjustments he's made to his repertoire this year, so it's certainly worth a read. I certainly hope we see a lot more work on the changeup before the Mets rush him to debut for the big club.

Speaking of rushing prospects, the Daily News had an article up pointing out that 7 out of the 9 starters yesterday were drafted or signed as teenagers (Tejada) by Omar Minaya. For all that he did poorly, he certainly did a nice job of evaluating the talent available in the middle of the draft.

ESPN points out that the Mets offense has been pretty putrid in two games without David Wright. While we can cross our fingers that the injury doesn't keep him out long, Terry Collins addressed some possibilities if he does have to go to the DL.

Around MLB:

The big story around both baseball and the division for the last few days has been the Ozzie Guillen comments about Fidel Castro. After being suspended for the next 5 games, Guillen addressed his team before their game against the Philthies. They'd go on to lose the game 7-1 as Josh Johnson had a pretty terrible night. Too bad somebody had to win that one.

The Braves offense finally showed a few signs of life yesterday, as they won 6-3 in a game Jason Heyward went yard. They are now 0-4 without Larry but 2-0 with him in the lineup. I suppose it's a good thing we know he's currently made of glass.

Reports came out yesterday that Johnny Damon is close to finalizing a deal with the Indians. I actually like this move for the tribe, as I'm not convinced that Detroit is going to run away and hide from the rest of that pretty terrible division.

The Dodgers just sold for ridiculous money, so many expected we'd hear about another financially troubled team going up for sale soon. It happened yesterday, but unfortunately for us that team isn't the Mets. The San Diego Padres are currently on the market in case any of you are interested...

And finally for today, Gaslamp Ball took a look at something they feel should become a staple food in ballparks. I'm not sold.