Sunday, April 27, 2008By Mike Steffanos
Game 23: Mets 4 - Braves 3
My feelings at the end of this one trended more towards relief than anything else. A win over the Braves was a welcome occurrence after the Mets came up short 3 times against them three times. I don't think I saw anything yesterday that gave me any strong conviction that the Mets had somehow turned a corner on the season, but it was nice to win one anyway.
John Maine continued his early season trend of not looking really sharp. He labored through some control issues that resulted in both runs that scored against him and reaching 100 pitches after 5 innings of work. Still, he hasn't allowed more than 2 earned runs since his first start of the season. It probably bodes well for him if he hits a stretch where things are clicking.
At times in this game it seemed Maine was relying heavily on his off-speed stuff. He didn't have the great fastball and he wasn't locating it, either. Given that, managing 7 Ks in those 5 innings of work testifies to the effectiveness of the slow stuff.
All of the offensive damage came against Hudson in the third. Beltran had a big 2-run double, and Church (triple) and Delgado (ground out) drove in the other two. David Wright and Damion Easley both had two hits. Gustavo Molina had his first hit as a New York Met.
On the other hand, Jose went 0-4 and dropped to .237, while Delgado did likewise and fell to .186. Even with the double Beltran was 1-4 with 2 strikeouts and is only hitting .222. The win was great, but the questions haven't gone away.
Subscribe to Site Feed
