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Meet the Mets
I watch a lot of soccer, and every so often you'll see a team steal a game "against the run of play" as the gaffers will say. The Mets did just that yesterday against the Marlins, stealing the game and the series from the Fish on a Marlon Byrd walk-off single. Despite getting outpitched and outhit, the Mets head to Philadelphia having taken the first two series of 2013.
One of the reasons (well, the main reason) the Mets were outpitched on Sunday was Marlins rookie Jose Fernandez, who struck out eight and just generally dominated the New York lineup. I'm sure there will be plenty of fascinating insight into the Mets player development system this morning, but here's Jorge Castillo with a more measured take.
As mentioned, the Mets head to flip...flip...flip...flipadelphia tonight to kick off a ten-game road trip. Matt Harvey takes on Roy Halladay, who is having some issues so far in 2013.
The New York Times profiled Mets broadcaster Ron Darling. Best part of the piece: Ronny talking about his weekly brunch in Williamsburg with a bunch of bleary-eyed hipsters.
Greg Prince pens a paean to John Buck over at Faith and Fear in Flushing. For those who care about such things, Buck is currently leading the team in fWAR. He also is doing that thing where his batting average is higher than his on-base percentage.
Yesterday at AA
Brock Mahan wrote about Doc Gooden's major league debut on This Date in Mets History.
Around the NL East
The Phillies dropped their second straight series to start the season, as their comeback attempt against the Royals fell short. Cole Hamels got roughed up for six runs and had to comfort himself after the game with a visit to his favorite place in the whole wide world.
The Braves made it five of six in 2013 with a 5-1 win over the Cubbies.
And Stephen Strasburg got touched up for six runs as his pitcher's duel with Johnny Cueto failed to materialize.
Around MLB
Box scores of note:
R.A. Dickey got roughed up by the Red Sox and heard some boos after getting lifted in the fifth. How dare they! As always, Canada is the worst. Hopefully this is just an Atlanta-like blip for R.A., but maybe Sandy should think about buying low here.
And it didn't go much better for Dickey's Cy Young counterpart in Tampa.
As it turns out, only Bartolo Colon can't strike out a bunch of Astros. Everyone else seems pretty okay at it.
Of course, the Astros offense is still better than the Pirates so far. After another dreadful performance against the Dodgers, Pittsburgh owns a .119/.188/.159 batting line, good for a -1 wRC+ per FanGraphs. Yes, negative one.
Jeff Sullivan brings his popular GIF series over to FanGraphs, taking a look at the worst pitches and worst swings from the first week of baseball.
Vladimir Guerrero will suit up in indy ball this year for the Long Island Ducks, Baseball Nation looks at how to get him back to the bigs.
Beyond the Box Score takes a look at late major league debuts and searches for the perfect trade.
And I mentioned on the past week's Amazin' Avenue Audio that Mets 2012 first round pick Gavin Cecchini was the only high prep pick from 2012 to start the season in extended spring training. Well, he'll have company now as David Dahl was busted back to XST for missing a plane flight.