Hello, everyone. This is Joey Beartran checking in with my latest installment of Joey's Small Bites. And if you're like me, you just want to take a huge bite out of this series, kind of like what the recently deceased Pedro Borbon did to Buzz Capra's cap during the 1973 National League Championship Series.
Everything that you wouldn't expect to happen in this series has happened. The Mets entered the series with more wins than the Yankees. That is not the case anymore, as the Bronx Bummers have taken the first two games of the series to surpass the Mets in victories. But let's look at some of the other things that have occurred in this series that no one saw coming.
Johan Santana took the mound in the first game of the series, making his first start since holding the National League's premier offensive team hitless. Of course, he gave up seven hits in six innings to the Yankees, four of which left the park. Meanwhile, his mound opponent, Hiroki Kuroda, who had never fared well against the Mets in his career (1-5, 5.75 ERA in seven starts prior to Friday night), retired 17 batters before allowing his first hit. His line over seven innings (one hit, one walk, seven strikeouts) was completely the opposite of what he had produced against the Mets in seven previous starts against them (36 innings pitched, 48 hits, 15 walks, 15 strikeouts).
The Mets have been incredibly productive this year when they have batted with two outs. Prior to Friday night's series opener, the Mets had scored 124 two-out runs, which accounted for almost half of the 254 runs they had scored on the season. How many two-out runs have they scored in this series? One. And it came in the ninth inning Friday night after the Mets were already down by nine runs. Not exactly a pressure situation, if you ask me.
Speaking of runs scored, can someone explain to me how the Mets have only scored three runs in two games in that bandbox in the Bronx? What, did they all suddenly enroll at the Kelvin Torve School For Scoring Runs? (For those who only know Kelvin Torve as the player who accidentally wore No. 24 for the Mets after it had been taken out of circulation out of respect for Willie Mays, he also holds an interesting team record regarding runs scored, or rather, runs NOT scored. Torve has the most career at-bats in a Mets uniform (46) without ever scoring a run for the team, beating out pitchers Mike Bruhert and Livan Hernandez, who both compiled 40 career at-bats for the Mets without crossing the plate at least once.)
Last but not least, Dillon Gee entered last night's game with a 4-3 record. Those three losses caught the eye of my Studious Metsimus colleague. He went through the team's roster and noticed that no Mets starting pitcher had lost more than three games this year. He then went through the rosters of the other 29 teams in the majors (He was doing this when he should have been paying attention to the game - some Mets fan he is!) and noticed that all of them had at least one starting pitcher with four losses. So trying to show off his research skills, he tweeted the following:
No #Mets starting pitcher has lost more than three games this year. They are the only team in baseball who can claim this.
— Ed Leyro (@Studi_Metsimus) June 10, 2012
Of course, that got the attention of his Twitter followers, who retweeted his sagelike observation ten times before the game ended. That tweet instantly became false once last night's final pitch was delivered, as Dillon Gee was saddled with his fourth loss of the season. If I've told him once, I've told him a thousand times. You do NOT talk about no-hitters while they are still in progress in the late innings (he heeded my advice during Santana's historic start against the Cardinals) and you do NOT tweet about something that hasn't happened because it will end up happening once you tweet about it (obviously, he paid me no mind on that one). Sigh. He'll never learn.
Well, that's it for this edition of Joey's Small Bites. Hopefully, today the Mets can eschew what they learned from Kelvin Torve and chew on the Yankees' pitchers' ERAs, a la Pedro Borbon. I'm hungry for a win today (not the only thing I'm hungry for). Let's salvage this series and take those Yankee brooms and shove them up their...
Ahem. Let's just win today, okay. You have no idea what all these losses are doing to me.
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