It’s amazing how well things worked out yesterday. No more than three pitchers were used to close out a 1-0 win over the Milwaukee Brewers, our first 1-0 win since August 2007. Johan Santana gave seven strong innings and fanned seven to earn his second victory of the season. Johan makes this looks easy. The Venezuelan lefty now sports a 0.46 ERA…not too shabby. This is way too early to determine who will win pitching’s yearly prize, but you can bet the Met ace will be in that conversation.
The bullpen has shown its brilliance over this season. Through 11 games, the ‘pen pals have a major league leading 1.80 era. Yesterday, the two new members of the team, J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez, closed the deal and provided a strong outing for the remainder of the game. Putz struck out two and held a runner in the eighth, while Frankie came in the ninth and struck out two batters, including a strikeout-throw out play to give them the opportunity to sweep today. It is no easy feat to do but the three pitchers were able to hold the thunderous bats of the Brewers to just six hits.
However, the Mets starting rotation has not shown their promise. The two to five starters have been struggling to get some wins but have not been able to hold down the opponents. Mike Pelfrey has tendinitis in his forearm and has missed today’s start. Oilver Perez has shown a tale of two pitchers, John Maine has had frustrating starts in Florida and against the Padres, Livan Hernandez showed his true colors in the series opener against the Brew crew. Something has to be done in order to give the team more chances to win. The bullpen was remade with young strong pitchers made up of home grown talent (O’Day, Parnell, Stokes) and from other organizations (Green, Rodriguez, Putz) that has probably put the rest of the majors on notice. Prospect pitcher Johnathan Niese is still trying to find himself but I will not doubt that he will come up sooner than you think.
Overall, the guns of the staff have shown a vast improvement, but there needs to be another starter with a (positive) consistency. Who will fill that role remains a mystery, at least for now.
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