So Much For Momentum

For one night anyway the Mets could exhale but only for one night as they were dealt another shot to the solar plexus, this time with their "ace" on the mound.


Wright sums up the frustration that is building by the game...

Tom Glavine had his second straight rotten outing, keeping himself stuck on 295 victories through poor pitching rather than suffering at the hands of his own sickly run support.

Perhaps worse still was the fact that Mets pitching in general surrendered three separate leads, 1-0 then 3-2 and finally 5-4 as they allowed the Yankees to score a pair of runs in five straight innings - even a brief awakening of Met bats wasn't enough to overcome that kind of pitching ineptitude.

Yes, Glavine was dogged by 8 hits and 7 earned runs over a mere 4 innings to bring his record to a decidedly mediocre 5-5 on the season and raise his once-sterling ERA all the way up to 4.67.

But equally disappointing was Guillermo Mota who continued his downward spiral off drugs. After allowing another pair of runs, three hits and two walks over a mere 2 innings of work, Mota's ERA has now spiralled to levels deserving of a quick demotion back down to New Orleans to find a new dealer.

No, when you think about it, pitching did the Mets in but worse still was another loss despite scoring 8 runs of their own and seeming on the verge of making a miraculous comeback in the 8th and 9th innings. Another loss that put them on the verge of losing another series, their 5th in a row. An official slump.

It didn't help that Carlos Beltran continued to prove that playing hurt is no answer to helping the lineup - his 0 for 6 night resulted in 9 stranded runners and it's clear that Beltran needs several days or even as much as a week off to heal himself. Problem is, with all the other absences in the outfield this isn't really a feasible option so Beltran is left to struggle, dangle on a rope.

It didn't even matter that Carlos Delgado woke up for a night with a pair of primarily useless singles or that Lo Duca had a trio of hits or that Jose Reyes was running wild again with a pair of walks, a pair of runs, a pair of runs batted in and a pair of stolen bases. The Mets may have managed an impressive run tally for their 14 hits but it fell just short enough to earn the loss.