Mets 9 Phillies 3

Another hot start for the Mets. They scored in the first inning for the 7th game in a row. They won all seven of those games. Coincidence?
The fact is, everyone is hitting right now. The first inning was simple, three hits (LoDuca, Delgado and Wright) producing two runs.
The second inning was a little different, Myers imploded after getting the first two outs, eventually walking in a the run. But the bases were only loaded because of some more bad defense by David Bell. He made another error on a grounder by Lo Duca that instead of being the third out, loaded the bases.
The Mets put up 3 more in the 3rd, for the second straight night a big inning was started by a solo homer by Wright. The error by the catcher turned out to be inconsequential, it allowed Milledge to get to second, but he would have scored from first anyway on Reyes' triple. But that shouldn't have been a triple, Abreu should have caught that ball.





Ryan Howard made an idiotic base running blunder to bail out El Duque in the second. Bell hits a deep fly ball with first and second and one out. Beltran makes a great running catch, Howard was halfway, retreated to the bag, saw the throw was going to get by the cutoff man and took off for third. Delgado came across grabbed the throw and Howard got caught in a rundown. He should have been halfway because there was a good chance the ball would drop, but once it was caught he should have retreated and not tried to advance.

The Phillies did tack on 2 in the third off El Duque who didn't have his best stuff tonight, but it's hard to judge a starter who has such a big lead and only pitches three innings.

The bullpen held down the fort after the rain delay. Oliver, Feliciano and Bell, once again allowing Heilman, Sanchez and Wagner to take the day off.

In fact nothing much happened after the rain delay. During the early part of the game when the Mets were scoring all those runs I almost wanted to root for them to make out so they could speed up and make it an official game. I'm glad they were able to get in all 9 innings.

Franco did get another pinch hit, an RBI double, in the 7th. But on that play Lastings Milledge got himself in hot water with Willie Randolph again. Milledge got thrown out at the plate, and Willie lectured him for not scoring on the play, saying he was spectating too much.
Milledge said he peeked twice, to see if the ball was caught, and to seeif the ball would be caught, and if the throw would hit the cutoff man.
"Peeking into right tends to slow me down a little bit," Milledge said.
He should have scored but the bottome line according to Milledge: "Could've. Should've. Didn't. We won the game. So it doesn't matter."