Image via WikipediaO-F-F-E-N-S-E!
It's a beautiful thing.
The Mets finished their three-game series with a flourish, sending eight runners across the plate and getting a "Good Ollie" effort.
Carlos Beltran continues to tear the cover off the ball. Beltran is 6 for his last 16 with 8 RBIs. "I feel my legs and my timing are almost getting there," Beltran said. "I don't want to say that I'm perfect, but it's getting close."
If that is "close" I will take close any time. He looks confident and ready at the plate, and not like a guess hitter struggling to make contact.Final 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E Cincinnati 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 3 7 0 N.Y. Mets « 3 0 0 0 3 2 0 0 x 8 14 0
|
The rest of the Mets offensive stars are hitting as well--David Wright has come out of his mini-slump; Carlos Delgado is riding a 9 game hitting streak; Ryan Church hit another home run yesterday (he leads the club with 7), and Alou just goes up there and is Alou, ie, see ball, hit ball, drive in run. And a nice BTW--Brian Schneider is batting .301 on the year and is starting to show a bit of power.
So what to make of all this? Are the Mets back to where we thought they'd be with a lineup? The short answer is yes. Having Alou back in the lineup has restored order to the Mets universe. He is a right handed hitter who makes great contact and works the count, and he absolutely allows the other players to relax and find their rhythm. Willie Randolph agrees on the importance of chemistry and rhythm.
"To me, it doesn't matter who we're playing," Randolph said. "The Washington team plays us tough. We just need to win ballgames and execute and do the things that are conducive to us getting into a rhythm and playing better overall baseball."
Said David Wright: "We try to beat up on everybody. It doesn't matter who we're playing. To go out there and win a series, that's big."
"We have the type of offense, when we click, we're going to score a lot of runs," Wright said. "We can do it in a number of different ways. We can hit the home runs like we did today or we can play small ball, steal some bases. When everybody gets hot, it's a pretty scary lineup."
Ollie Perez had a very strong outing; in fact he was down right dominant through his first 5 innings before getting into a little trouble in the 6th. He seemed to go away from his fastball and drop his arm slot in the 6th, and the results were't great.
Randolph said Perez (3-3) gets in trouble when he "starts acting like a jazz player and improvising" with different arm angles and pitching rhythms. That's what happened in the sixth inning, when Perez went to a sidearm delivery on a pitch to Paul Bako that went into the dirt, rolled past catcher Brian Schneider and allowed Jeff Keppinger to score from third base for the third run of the inning.
"I was a little tired," Perez said. "It's been a tough week for us because we went to Arizona, the time was different, we flied like five hours and we had (a doubleheader). You just have to make pitches and get out of the inning."
But it's the offense we're all excited about. Yes folks, the cylinders are clicking--32 runs in their last 3 wins is evidence of that. Yes Arroyo had a nice game Saturday night, but that's going to happen. The key is to keep the momentum going against the Nationals and get a sweep, or at least 3 of 4.Some stuff I like:
Newsday has a piece on Scott Schoeneweiss turning Boos into Cheers.
The Bergen Record talks about Ollie's Jolly Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment