Dickey Rises to the Occasion

On the afternoon after another reliever started a game for the Mets, R.A. Dickey took the ball knowing that he needed to go deep into the game to help out a depleted bullpen.  For some unknown reason, Fernando Nieve, who is the most used and abused reliever in all of baseball, started last night’s game for the Mets.  Not surprisingly, he only lasted 2 innings and the bullpen was called in again to throw 7 innings.

The Mets took a 1-0 lead in the first inning and Rickie Weeks immediately erased it with a homer to lead off the bottom half for the Brew Crew.  Angel Pagan looked like he might have a chance bring back the would be homer, but the ball was just out of his reach and bounced off the top of the wall and over the fence.

In the 4^th inning, with the Mets down 2-1, Dickey helped himself with an RBI single that tied the game up at 2.  After R.A. laid down a sac-bunt in the 6^th, Jose Reyes drew a walk off of Mets nemesis Jeff Suppan to load the bases.  On a 3-2 count with 2 outs, Louie Castillo smashed a grounder up the middle to plate Frenchy and Henry Blanco to give the Mets a 4-2 lead.

Dickey held the Brewers at bay for the next 2 innings and the Mets padded his lead to 6-2 in the top of the 7th, after a David Wright ground-rule double and an Angel Pagan 2-run homer.  Angel Pagan is quietly becoming the Mets best all around outfielder.  This season, Angel is hitting .295 with 4 homers 22 RBI’s and 9 steals.  He projects to drive in 70+ runs and have around 30 steals.  It’s nice to see a player take advantage of the opportunity to play everyday.

In the bottom of the 7^th, Weeks struck again with a 2-run homer for his second of the day.  But all in all, R.A. did exactly what the Mets needed.  He gave them 7 quality innings and let the bullpen rest.  Dickey left the game with a 6-4 lead and his third good start in as many tries since being called up from Buffalo.

The Metsies tacked on 4 more runs in the top of the 9^th inning off reliever Zach Braddok, and K-Rod pitched a scoreless bottom half for a 10-4 Mets win.  The Mets 5-6-7-8 hitters (Wright/Pagan/Frenchy/Pagan) went 11 for 17 with 6 RBI.  It was great so see the team as a whole, taking pitches from starter Randy Wolf and recognizing that he was not able to get that 65mph curveball over the plate.  In total, the Mets drew 8 walks and saw over 200 pitches from Brewers pitchers.

The Mets head out to San Diego tomorrow night to start a 3 game series versus the NL West leading Padres.  Hisanori Takahashi faces off against Kevin Corriea at 9:30 pm.  It would be nice to see the Mets pitchers pound the strike zone and play to contact.  PETCO park is huge guys…let’s play like we are at home.  Let’s go Mets!