Mets Take 2nd of 3 Against Cards, Santana Shines

For all he was roundly rubbished for failing to come out for the 9th innning in his last outing which the bullpen blew, with the bullpen exhausted, an even fatter lead at his disposal and perhaps his ears burning, Johan Santana pitched his complete game, finally, his first as a Met and the first place lead is still a full game over the Phillies.


Finally made it to 9!

Following Saturday night's epic loss which saw the entirety of the bullpen stretched to capacity and Aaron Heilman surrender the game-losing homerun to Pujols in the 14th in his third inning of relief, there was good reason to see Santana stretch it out all the way for a change.

Saturday night's 5 hour 9 minute marathon temporarily derailed an otherwise wonderous Met run but, considering they started a battery consisting of Brandon Knight, in essence, a minor league relief pitcher and Robinson Cancel, who last started a game behind the plate in the Majors when Jose Reyes was getting his lunch money stolen from him in a Dominican shakedown back at Liceoi Delia Reyes High School, it's rather amazing that it took the once-wonderous Cards 14 innings to finally put the Mets away and even then, not until Heilman was on the mound.

In any event the losing streak lasted only a game, the NL East is still the Mets' for the moment and the Marlins are coming up. That the Phillies have only to face the Nats could be bothersome but as frustrating as the Mets play was earlier this season, they have been even better at convincing the league and their fans that the bad times are dead and buried once and for all.


Plus we ent going to forget this unbelievable catch from the plate-challenged Carlos Beltran any time soon...

Besides Beltran's catch and Santana's pitching the Mets offense was also prolific with 17 hits, three of which were homers.

Not only that, they did it against Kyle Lohse, the Cards ace, who hadn't lost since May 8th.