To Do List: Lose Friday, Win Saturday.

(Army's Note: from the bunker of Stratford Upon Avon, catching up with the Mets):

Friday Night, Lose:


Whattaya gonna do?

In spite of the loss, good news. The Mets stopped Chase Utley's repugnantly pseudo hitting streak (I watched what was termed a "hit" in St Louis last Wednesday where the streak technically "should have" ended.), grounding it to an unmitigated halt.

Now one loss in the scheme of things isn't such a big deal, even if it was precipitated by another perilous performance by the bullpen. The big deal was ending Utley's streak, stopping the madness.

"Nothing against Chase Utley, but we didn't want him to get a hit," Jose Valentin tried to explain. "Not because of the streak, [but] because we wanted to win."

Nothing against Chase Utley? Hitting .400 in the first 4 games of the season at Shea? 7 homers in 19 career games at Shea? I think there's plenty against Chase Utley.

In any event, the Phillies moved closer to the division lead than they have been since the July 4.

El Duque had another strong outing, 3 runs, 7 hits and seven strikeouts in 6 innings. Oliver and Feliciano combining unique roles of trouble, gopherballitis and doom.

At the plate, Reyes had three hits - he's hitting .385 against the Phillies on the road and .346 against them at Shea. Not to mention .381 overall in August.

*****

Saturday Planner: Win

David Wright squeezes another pitcher's head.

The revelation that Glavine thinks "too much" goes a long way in explaining his recent struggles. It's even better than "the sun got in my eyes" or "the dog ate my concentration".

The intellectual angst of Tom Glavine is ruining the twilight of his career.

For a night anyway, he appeared to put away the thinking cap and instead clad in his finest dunce cap, he allowed only five hits in seven innings, one of which, a three run jack.

The Mets were on the precipice of putting a few more doubts in a few more heads Saturday. Ryan Howard poked out another three run homer. But let's thank Jon Lieber for this one.

Cruising through six, 3-1 lead with two outs on the books, he turned an easy ending inning ball from Carlos Beltran into a comedy of existential flair. That opened the flood gates and the Mets flooded through.

Carlos Delgado singled to put runners at the corners. Then David Wright then knocked one into shallow left that neither Pat Burrell or Jimmy Rollins could decide to catch. Beltran scored to make it 3-2 and the Mets still had runners at the corners. Endy Chavez then cleared the bases to give the Mets the lead.

Then David Wright's diving grab of Lieberthal's sizzler to end the game, save the game, save Billy Wagner yet again. Still, scoreless 8th and 9th inning outings betwen Wagner and Aaron Heilman show that it would appear Roberto Hernandez was brought in as insurance in the event Aaron Heilman choked on the set up role.

No one asked if Heilman was thinking too much. 0-1 with a sparkling 6.75 ERA so far this month. A string of scoreless outings might eventually erase that wretched outing against the Marlins on the 3rd but it will take the rest of the season for anyone to feel comfortable about Heilman or Hernandez acting as the set up man and that's only if they don't have spasms of incompetancy ever few games.

And what about the promotion of Lastings Milledge?

Hitting a robust .187 since getting the call up.

And do you know what Xavier Nady is doing with the Pirates?

Hitting .389 with a .450 on base percentage. 4 for 5 at Wrigley. Three doubles, two RBIs, two runs scored.

We won't belabour the obvious any more than that.



Today, John Maine will be taking his 17 inning scoreless streak against the Phillies. Allegedly he's recovering from symptoms similar to whatever it was Glavine and Julio Franco were suffering from. A weakened Maine might allow a bad inning to get the best of him.