Archie Bunker's Army

So, the Mets began their three game series in Atlanta Friday night a half game behind the Phillies for first and 1 1/2 games ahead of the Brewers for the wildcard. Two losses and one victory later, they still maintain their narrow wildcard lead but have fallen a further full game behind the Phillies. It ent lookin rosy. On Saturday night the pen was flawless but Pedro couldn't knock in more runs than he allowed which was a pity considering the rest of the Mets order was stifled by a combination of mediocre Brave hurlers. 6 meagre hits by the vaunted Mets batting order and only Pedro's 2-run double amounted to anything. And then yesterday, having relinquished their tender, day-old half game lead over the Phillies, the Mets revisited a predictable nemesis; the predictably disappointing bullpen. Schoeneweis , Smith , Feliciano and Heilman combined in one sad and pathetic inning to give up 4 runs, 4 hits and 2 walks as a rubbish Braves linep transformed a 4-3 lead, like a mag...

I see that the Mets won and the Phillies and Brewers lost. First place for a night. I'm due in NYC for Game 3, National League host. Let's say Shea.

I have to admit, having listened to the Brewers bullpen implode against the Cubs and blow a 6-2 lead in the 9th, the woes of the Mets own pen were put in perspective and, knowing Santana was pitching last night, a little of the pressure against the Nats was off. No doubt the Mets, with the exception of David "Choking Dog" Wright , felt much the same way. Mr Masterful Santana was masterful, hurling 7 nearly-spotless innings whilst the Mets built up a convincing 7-1 lead. 15 consecutive starts without a loss. The bullpen, by and large, gave everyone's nerves a rest for a change, allowing only a run despite Joe Smith's dubious 23 pitch inning in the 8th wherein he managed to give up 3 hits and a run but started no major fires. Show-a-loss shat himself again; giving up a pair of hits and trying to open the door to a 9th inning Nat rally before Jerry yanked him for Feliciano , who nearly walked Langerhan, a .231 hitter to load the bases, but instead, induced an inning ...

So for one night back to the foibles we are a little more comfortable with: the inadequacies of the bullpen. Oh yes, for one night anyway, the Mets batting order regained a modicum of its swagger; 4 homers, one from each side of the plate from Beltran , a game opening smash from Reyes and a monster from Delgado . Rather than rest on an early lead and fizzle for the remainder of the game as they're prone to do, the Mets even added 4 runs in the 3rd and another an inning later to build a morale-boosting 7-2 lead. Anyone want to be in this poor bastid's shoes? Of course with nowhere man Brandon Knight fighting to keep his head above water we all knew it was only a matter of time before anxiety began to set in and sure enough, with a series of tumultuous appearances by Ricardo Rincon and Brian Stokes cutting the lead to a paltry 3 runs by the end of the 7th, sure enough, it did. Heilman , who inexplicably was allowed to debauch the game with an appearance, was wisely yanked afte...

"This is like deja vu all over again." -- Yogi Berra So, the replay of last season's September choke continues, albeit on a lesser scale this time, only a lead half the size has been blown. yeah, thanks Mr Team to Beat. "With (pitcher Johan Santana), now, I have no doubt that we're going to win in our division," Beltran said back in Feb. "So this year, to Jimmy Rollins, we are the team to beat." Last night's 1-0 loss to the lowly Nats introduced a new and exciting theme. The incompetence of the bullpen was no longer an issue with the meat of the Mets order going rotten faster than Lehman Brothers. Two runs and nine puny hits against the worst team in baseball is not a slump. It's the final sign this team is gasping for air, choking to death. 2 hits in 16 at-bats for Reyes , Beltran , Wright and Delgado says it all. “Like I’ve said all along, this is a little bump in the road,” David Wright repeated to the world like a mantra. “I...

This was the kind of game the Mets have taken by the scruff of the neck under Jerry Manuel this season. On the heels of many demoralising losses the Mets have made a statement through victory. Not so last night. Last night they let the Nats to beat up on them with barely a whimper of protest. I mean, c'mon. John Lannan?? Anderson effin Hernandez? .209 in 158 at-bats with the bases loaded this season? Ugh. This loss is a deep whiff of 2007. For the first time in months, the NL East lead down to a half game, the Mets failed to come back from a bitter, ugly loss and exacerbated it with another ugly loss instead. Flat. Maybe scared. Maybe doomed. "There's no panic. We know what's at stake," David Wright says with panic written all over. Reyes, Wright, Beltran, Delgado; 1 for 15. Talk is cheap, lads. It's now or never time.

Well, for the last 2 days anyway, what has been held together by the vaguest of hopes, chicken wire and packing tape, appears to be coming apart. That's right - the oft-loathed, occasionally relieving relievers who have allowed us the wildest of speculations despite the lack of a "real" closer for their momentary daliance with competence may once again be on the down swing, at the direst of times. no single-handed heroics were big enough The debacle of three of the last four games now haunt us all and, like the sword of Damocles poised, threatens the seson yet again. Of course there is also the lack of timely hitting to blame yet let's face it, not even a dozen runs is a safe lead when it omes to the pen at times. yes indeed, exactly Yesterday's stomach-turning reult, like so many blown victories this season, seemed almost pre-ordained: a slim 2 run margin into the 9th was almost laughable when bemoaning 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position yesterday and leav...

It appears all those Phillies phans who thought they could back into the post season again might have to reassess their October plans. That's right - thanks to the Phillie phailure to go for the kill Sunday night the Mets' magic number is down to 16. And, bonus - last night's 10-8 win over the gnats mathematically eliminated the Atlanta Braves. The funny thing is with Carlos Delgado enamouring the fans with a couple of homers a night to the point they've begun to chant MVP instead of douchebag, you'd almost forget there wasn't a soul outside the team who hadn't written his career off and yet boom! There he is, righting all the wrongs, playing like it was the 2006 Division Series all over again. Or yeah when everyone was dreaming about this in Spring Training we were all talking about how some washed out reliever on the Nats was going to save our season by replacing The Hillbilly as our closer. And look, after last night how many Mets have at least 100 R...

Game 1 The Mets hitting impotence carried over from the opener, Pedro looked his age and Fernando Tatis badly misjudged a Greg Dobbs fly ball to right. 2 runs scored in 18 innnings earned the Mets a pair of losses to their arch rivals and saw their NL East lead shrink to a single game by Sunday night. Yes, the pen threw 5 scoreless innings but with Jose Reyes hitting .150 in September and Wright , Beltran and Delgado a combined 2 for 12 it didn't much matter. Game 2 Rare Mets appearance on British terrestrial telly sees Carlos Delgado solidify his MVP credentials by single-handedly pulling the Mets from their offensive catatonia and saving the Mets from a disasterous sweep. The Mets are now officially back on track - The Phillies had the Mets on the ropes but couldn't finish them. Sure there are muppets who insist the sky is falling down anyway but for now, I'm simplt satisfied tragedy was avoided. The collapse happened once. It isn't n annual holiday. And if ...

Ok, I don't really believe a single home loss to the Phillies last night is necessarily a harbinger of doom. Why can't I be Bretty Myers? Brett Myers , after all, continues to defy logic with his recent spell of dominant pitching (four starts, 4-0 with a 0.58 ERA with 35 strikeouts in 31 innings) and the Mets went down swinging time after time. Pelfrey was almost as effective but a miraculous grab by Fat Boy at first robbing Reyes of at least a certain double, as well as Murph missing a game-tying homer by inches in the bottom of the 6th. Even if he'd caught this, the Mets would still have lost 1-0. Another few inches might have helped Ryan Church catch Gregg Dobb's two-run shot in the bottom of the 7th. Church also had us all jumping up in our seats in the bottom of the 9th but alas, he didn't hit the ball quite hard enough and the game ended drearily, 3-0. The Mets were impatient at the plate and the number of Ks evidenced that. Is that from the pressure, a...

I admit, throwing three lefties against the lefty-eating Brewers had me worried. But who knows, maybe they were Nat or Pirate lefties they'd been feeding on. Sure, they beat up on poor Niese but otherwise, they folded meekly in the face of our trio of lefties. The Faux Brewers don't look like playoff material, CC can't pitch every game and don't be surprised if they go on an extended losing streak that drops them from the wild card lead altogether. What we do know is that for three games the Mets' disspiriting bullpen has t least temporarily righted itself: tonight Joe Smith proved that when used delicately, he can almost be competent, when he isn't tipping his pitches Duaner Sanchez is nearly fearsome and when spotted a 7 run lead, even Schoenweiss can close out a game. Amazing what an expanded roster can do for you. Nobody's catching Church's Granny Ryan Church's grand slam was all the Mets really needed, run-wise to see Oliver Perez get...

Two wins in a row on the road and we can make the following observations: 1. Niese is not ready for prime time just yet. First batter he faced homered - no crime there Santana and Pedro love the early gopher ball. But the subsequent meltdown in the 4th was more Annie than ace. In another season or two he could be another Pelf but as Jerry rightly noted: "This situation that we're in is not a time to be grooming or looking at people for the years to come. We're in a pennant race, and we're going to put the best people out there - day-in and day-out - to start the game. If he performs well, obviously you give him another shot." 2. Bullpen appears, for the moment anyway, to have silenced their critics with 13 straight scoreless innings. 3. Milwaukee's bullpen, by contrast, has blown both games against the Mets. 4. Given the above, conceivably the Mets could breeze to the NLCS if the Brewers ended up being their first round playoff opponent. They are...

It's the Mets who are supposed to have the handicapping pen but in the opener it was the Brewers whose pen blew the lead. Unfortunately my keypad is fucked so I`m typing this via an on-screen keyboard which is as laborious as chiseling it into stone thus although I`ve got many wonderous things to say about last night`s coe from behind victory, I will keep this necessarily brief. Go Mets. Hopefully keyboard will be sorted soon. From mutt to MVP in a few easy months

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...