Archie Bunker's Army

A 4 run margin going into the 9th inning is certainly not, in the venacular of the Mets' bullpen, a safe lead. However, with Brian Stokes acting as the closer du jour, combined with a diving catch by Jose Reyes to end the game, the Mets managed to squeak by with another valuable victory. After this comes the call-up of fresh arms from the farm clubs to restock the bullpen and give Jerry Manuel even more arms to barter against last-minute losses with. For today though, Pedro pitched 6 reasonably strong innings and the bullpen surrendered only three hits in the last three innings. Perhaps more importantly, unlike the usually lethargic batting displays with a lead in their pockets, the Mets actually hit with men on base and built on their slim one run lead in the 7th, handing the pen three more runs to work with. And just like that the Mets close out August leading the NL East by a slim margin hoping to avoid another September collapse. That month of avoidance begins tomorrow in Mi...

I have to wonder if Jerry Manuel's as desperate and as crazy as he sometimes acts. Jerry reverts back to his early career playing Easy Reader on Electric Company...or was that Morgan Freeman? Yes, easily and predictably you could blame Duaner Sanchez for allowing a game-tying homer or even Aaron Heilman for walking home the winning run but at the end of the day, I see one of those big foam fingers pointing at the Mets' fearless interim manager. I mean, good christ, the bullpen isn't bad enough already, doesn't have enough pressure, isn't already consumed with the failure facing them on a daily basis that you've got to have the manager INTENTIONALLY walking the bases loaded? That's not Russian Roulette relief mate, that's a bloody firing squad. Will the men in the little white suits be coming to take Jerry away? And to think he was crazy enough to intentionally walk the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and a one run lead with Aaron Heilman on th...

With a bullpen that is essentially the laughingstock of contenders, the Mets are kind of like a marathon runner who has broken a leg halfway through a race and limps along to the finish line, gritting out every step. Improbably, one out away from a loss, Carlos Beltran belted a dramatic grand slam to give the Mets a 5-2 going into the 9th. Beltran shows a little clutch for a change. Swings on first pitch - sure is an improvement over striking out with the bat on your shoulders in Game 7 of the NLCS, isn't it? Yet dramatically, with Luis Ayala left to save or blow the game on his own and struggling with a sort of hamstring ailment in the bottom of the 9th, the Magical Murph , rookie hotshot, made a rather incredible relay throw to hold pinch runner Alfredo Amezaga at third after Jorge Cantu's double and one Marlin later, the Mets finally had the victory. Typical drama. Typical edge-of-your-seat finale that is the trademark of a very unremarkable bullpen and once again, the...

The only thing you can say with any certainty about these 2008 Mets is that you never know what they are going to do. Ok, you can probably squawk "the bullpen sucks, the bullpen sucks" and be pretty safe most nights but every thing else is pretty much a crap shoot. Last night, even the bullpen would have proved you wrong. Brian Stokes pitched his fifth consecutive scoreless inning and has given up only 2 runs in 11 1/3 relief innings he's pitched for the Mets this season while earning the win. And with the lead and the game at stake the dreadful duo of Pedro Feliciano and Joe Smith somehow managed to combine to pitch an eventless and quiet 8th. In the 9th, Luis Ayala , a broken bat hit away from a flawless Met career and the defacto closer perhaps the rest of the way through, closed out the game 1-2-3 to earn his second save as a Met this season. Meanwhile, and perhaps even more ironic, the vaunted Phillies pen disintegrated in the 8th to blow this game. Brian Schneid...

13 innings to lose a 7 run lead and first place in the National League East. I was preparing a deep breath to go into a long and lovely rant about how much the Mets suck that they could blow this game in the demoralising manner that they did, about how this defeat mirrors the choke-job of last September, about how the season is unremarkably lost because the bullpen yet again fail to do the one thing they are asked to do. Oh yeah, and how the "defensive catcher" allows a ball to skip past him and the tying run to score when by rights, Jayson Werth was going to be out by a mile and the Mets were going to squeak out of this first game alive. But why bother? Reyes demonstrates the Mets NL East tactic, a downward dive. The Mets could win a game tonight and be back in first. Words are useless in this battle. You have to sit there soaking in every millisecornd of melodrama knowing as if it is some Philly sadist rather than the Mets and Phillies writing this story, that no matter...

Getting the feeling that in order to have any hope of salvaging the season your going to have to burn out the brightest young arm in your rotation? Granted, back to back complete games is not necessarily Six Million Dollar Man territory. That fat guy in Milwaukee does it almost every start. Nor is 108 pitches a particularly alarming number of pitches to through. Not unless your arm is hanging by a thread, like Pedro. Enjoy this whilst you still can because next season he will probably be on the DL. But surely no one can look at Pelfrey, his innings pitched, the innings he's pitched in the past and think Generation K You get the crazy urges, I'm sure, to imagine that even Aaron Heilman could hold a 9-0 lead, but deep down you realise this isn't a certainty and sparing the stadium more late inning bullpen cock-ups theatrics is always the nice way to close out a bank holiday weekend. Even if that's only in England and not in New York. Still, a bit of a waste of Pelf...

Let's all give Pedro Feliciano a round of applause. To the head. Ok, maybe a punch to the head. Ok, so the Mets couldn't hold a 3-0 lead but jaysus, Feliciano put it out of reach with a pair of homers surrendered in the 10th on Sunday because for christ only knows what reason, Luis Ayala , the one guy to date who has demonstrated some consistency getting outs out of the bullpen, leaves the game after three up three down. Deliver defeat from the jaws of victory, thanks again. However, the look of disgust on Jerry Manuel's face almost makes up for the idiotic removal of Ayala. Find the hot hand, that's what Mr Manuel said, post-loss. So the only hot hand is found in Ayala and discarded for the abusive Feliciano. Of course, this is a two-game tailspin which, on the heels of a nice stretch of good baseball, is probably to be expected. No team stays hot forever. But this game's turning point, bullpen's chicanery asidde, was the Mets' failure to do more with t...

Mets win again and again and again. God, that sounds good. So good I won't even put up photos for this victory, it speaks for itself. I will come back to NYC for the World Series finally. I know it's happening now. Mets. World Series. Don't you?

Sure, we can love Omar Infante for losing the ball in the lights out there in left field and letting 5 for 5 Carlos Delgado's ball to deflect off his glove and David Wright to run home with the game winning run last night but Omar Infante hasn't been out there the last 17 games since Wagner went down and the Mets have won 13 games of those games, 9 of their last 10. Omar Infante wasn't out there on the mound wearing Pedro's uniform to bravely come out for the 8th inning and at least try to keep the pen out of it. Nor did Omar Infante make that crucial bunted double play in the 8th or make that perhaps questionable call in the top of the 9th Omar Infante didn't pitch 1 1/3 innings of shutout relief like the newly acquired Luis Ayala did. No, no, no. That was all the Mets doing. Nothing to do with Omar Infante at all. Wright flies home Slowly but surely, even with no closer, the Mets are beginning to look like they have the resilience and skill, and are working...

It may do him irrepairable harm somewhere down the future, according to the doom mongers and nervous pitch count Nellies out there but Mike Pelfrey demonstrated he's willing and able to throw over the Maginot Line of 100 pitches and to throw a complete game for good measure. Result? You betcha. Mets take another off the Braves. Ever get sick of saying that? I didn't think so. A man steps up to the mound... Hopefully this won't lead to permanent damage but Pelfrey is the Mets' biggest surprise of the season from a pitching standpoint (the contributions of Church , Tatis , Murph , Lil' Reyes , Evans , Castro , Cancel , etc etc at the plate are equally welcomed but having a guy like Pelf develop before our eyes, especially after that hideous 0-7 start last season, well, sometimes the scouts are right after all.) What, complete game not enough for you? How about an RBI single in the 1st? And talk about rising to the occasion: knowing their bullpen is crap, the start...

Funny, isn't it? When it's your bullpen giving up 5 runs in the 8th inning to blow the loss wide open it's your bullpen that sucks. When it's the other teams' bullpen giving up 5 runs in the 8th inning to blow the game right open, it's down to clutch hitting. Happy faces all around with Delgado's unexpected clutch hit Last night Carlos Delgado's bases loaded double, with the Mets hitting 3 for their last 42 with the bases loaded, began the final push towards victory, punctuated by Damion Easley's own two-run single in that same inning as the Mets took the opener in what one might consider somewhat surprising fashion. Surprising because of the clutch hitting which has been dormant all month, or most of it anyway. Surprising because the much beleaguered bullpen, plagued further still by the latest news about the end of their closer's hopes this season , pitched 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief to seal the victory. And surprising, yet again, be...

Ok, ok, we've heard, seen and smellt it all. The bullpen sucks. Irrevocably. Forget about day dreaming that the Mets will find some miracle cure on the waiver wire or that they will get collectively as hot as they stink at the moment. It ent happening. The crappy bullpen is here to stay and the difficulties, nay, near impossibility of holding a lead is going to stay with the Mets for the remainder of the season so it's almost pointless as is it repetitious to roll out the excremental parodies night after night blaming the same names again and again and again. One of the many candidates for wanker of the day. To varying degrees and on most nights, Duaner Sanchez , Scott Schoenweiss , Pedro Feliciano , Joe Smith , Aaron Heilman and probably Brian Stokes and Luis Ayala as well now that Eddie Kunz is gone; one or all of them is going to blow a lead the Mets have carefully crafted and basically hamper this team as though they were a pair of pliars and the Mets hope for victor...

Not all the news, despite winning all three games against the Pirates this weekend with three outstanding starts from Pelfrey , Pedro and Santana , was good news. First, the Phillies took two of three from the Padres to stay within two games of the Mets in the NL East. Secondly, the bullpen, which nearly blew a massive lead on Saturday, received further bad news when it was revealed The Hillbilly Is Still Hurtin and the cavalry is not on the way. Wagner will not be coming off the disabled list after all. On Friday night, the bullpen entered the game in the 8th with the narrowest of two run leads after a rather brilliant performance from Mike Pelfrey ; six hits and seven shutout innings. Relief was a hard as it looked Friday night. Duaner Sanchez , Pedro Feliciano and Aaron Heilman closed it out surrendering only one run: Jack Wilson's lead homer off of Feliciano in the 8th to which kept everyone's hearts in their collective throats for the rest of the game. Feliciano mad...

I have to admit I was quite skeptical about Oliver Perez's start against the Nats. Hard to imagine, Olly pitching consistently, Delgado still playing vintage Delgado... He was coming off a 120 pitch start, he has a prediliction for failing to concentrate against the rubbish teams, and at this point in the season, the Nats certainly qualify as rubbish and well, what were the odds that the Mets, with their own rubbish overflowing out of the bullpen, were going to be able to avoid disaster for thee consecutive games and complete their first road sweep of the season? But surprise, surprise. Perez, with a 1.97 ERA in his last 9 starts, pitched extended his scoreless inning streak to 15 games before finally succumbing to reality in the 7th and letting three in to narrow the Mets margin to 5-3 and making us all exceedingly jittery at the prospects of the bullpen coming in and the lifeless Nats suddenly springing to life. Instead, Joe Smith came in and closed off the bleeding in the 7th b...

Nothing to bemoan for a change. An off night for a bad team and a good night for a better-than-average team meant John Maine returned to the rotation from the DL last with sufficient run support to relax which in theory anyway, what a team should be able to do against a team like the Nats. The Murph is still hitting the bejauysus out of the ball, another three hits worth, including another homer. 8 runs in the 3rd was just the kind of medication a rubbish bullpen on the heels of an amazing and thoroughly unexpected two innings of success on Tuesday night deserved. A night off from pressure. Not only that but whilst the Mets enter into a cream puff section of their schedule, the Phillies were losing their third game in a row to the Dodgers, and just like that the NL East lead evaporated and the Mets are once again tied for the top. nice and easy Most importantly of course was a night off from the pressure of relying on the pen to save a win. It was like being on a mini holiday for a ...

Dear, Sweet Je$u$, Thank you for pulling the collective arses of Jerry Manuel , Johan Santana , Pedro Feliciano and Eddie "Nothing But A Bunch Of" Kunz out of the fire last night. (Manager Manuel, you will recall, pinch hit for Santana after 94 pitches in the 8th with the bases loaded so that Brian Schneider could strike out in his stead and further that the bullpen, namely Feliciano in the instant case, could try and ho-ho-ho hee-hee-hee ha-ha-ha , hold a 1 run lead.) Unbelievably, you took mercy on both Manuel for either a)making the right decision in a crapshoot called Russian Roulette Relievers b) guessing c) making a desperate choice when utterly out of reasonable options. Sure, if Schneider had turned around and hit a grand slam it could have rightly been hailed, similarly to the choice of relievers, as either incredible luck or a decision bordering on genius, the difference being primarily that based on probability alone, Schneider probably had a better chance of hi...

They're calling it Russian Roulette Relief , the daily load the chamber, put the reliever to your head, pull the trigger and watch another lead explode out of the back and splatter another blown victory all over the wall. Congratulations, douchebag. You just blew another one. Last night it was the Pirates who ate up a 5-1 lead Pedro had left the game with, satisfied with the outing after 99 pitches and a reasonable six innings under his belt. Don't get too excited, Petey, there's still 3 innings and a piss pot bullpen to go... It was a game, at that point, with the Pirates seemingly demoralised, that seemed one even the bullpen couldn't blow. But they did. Point fingers, break fingers, pull triggers, however you choose to deal with it the bottom line is that the Mets have NO PRAYER of winning the NL East or squeaking in as a wild card so long as the bullpen cannot hold a lead. The definition of ugliness courtesy of the NY Times And it wasn't just Aaron Heilman...

Out of three games, they gained a game on the Phillies in the NL East and nearly swept their nearest rivals, the Marlins. You could also point out that even in yesterday's ugly loss, Mike Pelfrey's continued struggles, (last three starts he's given up 13 earned runs in 15 1/3 innings)were somewhat overshadowed by his struggles generally against the Marlins (in three appearances against the Marlins this season, he has surrendered 15 runs in 12 2/3 innings) but then, of course you'd be merely whistling past the grave and ignoring the fact that his 23 starts this season are more than his other two seasons combined. You'd be ignoring the warning signs. Manager Manuel says he'll try to get Pelf some rest from time to time but mostly it looks like he's just going to have to suck it up. Not to be all gloom and doom though. Aaron Heilman followed up his first save of the season on Friday with another on Saturday which is about as high up on the Scale of the Une...

Just when you thought one more kick would bury this guy forever, Aaron Heilman came into last night's game protecting what, in the Mets world anyway is a very, very slim 3 run lead with 6 outs to go. Was there ANYONE at Shea or clenching their fists listening on the radio or watching on television that didn't expect Heilman to simply wilt and if not give the lead away at least open the door to a demoralising Marlin victory? And yet just when you think the world is going to end there is Heilman doing the unthinkable, pitching with an UnHeilman-like efficiency, a perfect 8th and 9th inning to earn his first save of the season. Mets victory, coupled with the Phillies loss to the Pirates now narrows the NL East lead the Phillies hold to a single game. Whoops! Last out of the night for Olly that nearly wasn't. Whilst the focus has been on the bullpen's weak-kneed antics, the other story was Oliver Perez's wonderfully pitched, if not slightly rutted game, one wherein ...

Yes, David Wright ultimately won it for the Mets in the bottom of the 9th with a two-run walk off homerun. Even the mere HINT of a benching jump-started Wright yesterday Yes, the Mets took two of three from the Padres in a crucial series and even crawled back to within two games of the Phillies. But let's face it. The bullpen sucks and if the Mets struggled this mightily against the lowly Padres to hold a lead in both victories, gawd only knows what's going to happen against the likes of the Marlins, homefield advantage or not. If you were Johan Santana , the same one who has watched the bullpen ruin a half dozen victories already this season, (in 24 starts which is more than the Twins' bullpen blew for him in 100 starts...) what in the hell are you doing handing over the ball with a slim lead, 104 pitches thrown and 6 outs still needed? According to Manager Manuel this is all down to protecting an investment. "He's been over 100 pitches more than he has been in...

Well you can't chalk this loss up against the wuthering bullpen. There was never a lead to blow. If Pedro had pitched all season he'd be giving Santana a run for his money as Gopherball Champion Starting with the first pitch of the game, a Jody Gerut gopher ball surrendered by Pedro , the Mets fell behind and despite a couple of mewling little efforts at offense, stayed behind in a demoralising sort of 4-2 loss that dropped them 3 full games behind the Phillies. In many ways a familiar theme to the early days of this season - the Mets put some runners on, put them in scoring position and then watched the guys who are supposed to be driving those runs home fizzle. Three innings the Mets ended with runners in scoring position and Carlos Beltran failing: but not only Beltran. For the night, a meak 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position. Want to see the source of this loss? Look no further. Carloses Delgado and Beltran 0 for the Evening. Another rock to poke under. Ano...

Oh, they coulda sunk to mighty depths, the Mets coulda. If Scott Schoeneweis hadn't gotten Brian Giles to fly out to centerfield for the final, desperate out of the game and the nerve-wracking 6-5 victory, the Mets would be staring at a 5-game losing streak, a gutting loss and probably their season out the window. Instead, they live another day. The look of disgust on Jerry Manuel's face as he calls for the removal of Heilman is so succinct one would almost expect to see an ice pick coming out of the side of Heilman's neck... Aaron Heilman , we all know, is a punk. Actually, that can be said with a smile. I feel bad for the guy. He's not a closer, he's struggled most of the season even as a set-up man and thanks to Hillybilly Wagner's trip to the DL, his reward is to be named a closer. And perhaps predictably, instead of stepping up, there he was in all his glorious Heilmanesque hideousness, surrendering a nearly devastating three run homer in the top of ...

Close your eyes for one second, blink even and poof! There go the Mets team dreams were made of. Just like that not only not in first place but dropped down to third. Instead of holding the lead, three games behind, instead of 10 game-winning streak, a 4 game losing streak, losing losing losing, the Mother of Miserable Road Trips. To teams like the Astros no less. Three times in a row. Swept by the Astros. Has a hideous little ring to it. It's difficult to gauge what will happen to these guys. The hot ones are cooling off ever so slowly. Kids are coming up from nowhere, Double AA, Triple AAA, waiver wires, retirement and one face, one day, like let's say Murph in Game 2 on Saturday against the Stros - he with the spectacular double play leaping catch, double runner off second kind of game. And you just know that'll be his big hurrah for the season - that and a hit in his first at-bat. Besides cooling off, there are others getting hurt. Not talking about Alou or E...