Mets 4 Braves 3

Congratulations to Pedro Martinez for winning the 200th game of his career. He pitched pretty well, but not great. Luckily, this new offense gave him enough runs to win. It's so enjoyable to watch him and pitch and to have him on the team. He is always smiling and his walk off the field when he was waving to the fans was great.

Xavier Nady hit another early home run. I've been talking a lot about getting the early lead and not giving runs back right after you get them. Nady's homer allowed the Mets to stay tied.

Carlos Delgado. M-V-P! M-V-P! Another huge home run for him. He's been hitting them hard, and far and exactly when we need them. Atlanta got the lead back and his homer turned the game.

Duaner Sanchez. Another awesome off-season acquisition by Minaya. You need a reliever who can come in with runners on base and get the key strikeout. A lot of pitchers can come in to start an inning and get out of there scoreless, but stranding inherited runners is usually of much greater import. Then he pitched a scoreless 8th. A great performance by him.

Billy Wagner keeps shutting the door. This is the type of game that Benitez or Looper would have blown. With each save we can start to forget about the blown one in the second game of the season against Washington.

This was a huge game psychologically because we had our best pitcher against the Braves. The Braves are still the team to beat in the NL East and the Mets are never going to get over that hump until the beat the Braves. Normally Turner Field is what kills the Mets but last night's game was a good start. Now they need to get at least one of the next two games.

Carlos Beltran and Cliff Floyd are both hurt now. This could be a huge problem because even if they are not out for extended periods of time, whenever they are struggling we will start to hear that it is because of the injury. We had two good weeks of Beltran, if this injury means a return to the guy who sucked last year, then we are in trouble.

Those injuries also really weaken the lineup. With Chavez and Hernandez in the lineup, that's like three automatic outs. This is going to hurt, when Wright and Nady get one if Valentin comes up followed by Chavez and Hernandez they are not going to get those runs in.