Put the Phillies in their place the Mets did do. They swept a doubleheader on Friday to get things underway, and including yesterday's 5-2 defeat, hit 10 home runs this past weekend, including 4 by Carlos Beltran. They roughed up 2 interim members of Philadelphia's deep starting rotation, leaving a sufficiently large trail of smoldering structures and tearful senior citizens in the wake of their Friday/Saturday pillaging of the city of Philadelphia to insure that even Jimmy Rollins wouldn't be able to get too excited about his contributions to the Phillies' collective damage control on Sunday afternoon.
Why don't I look happy after hitting a home run? Because my team still isn't as good as the Mets
Normally, I might feel sorry for a team that is about to lose the 10,000th game in their franchise history. A team whose name is synonymous with futility. A team that has always been somewhat of a little brother to one of it's division rivals that itself doesn't have the most win-filled history. (Yeah, I'm talking about the Mets)
I would stop with the big brother/little brother analogy, too, but it just seems so apt. The Phillies have had a few good years, and their last World Championship was only 3 years before the Mets' most recent title. But they can just never seem to get over the hump. They've got a far more frequent knack for blowing it than the Mets do - and hey, that's saying something! Whether it's derived from less of a tendency to blow big games, or just more success for the Mets, big brother/little brother just feels right.
Mitch Williams or Armando Benitez?
Anyway. I'd feel sorry for the Phils if they accepted their shortcomings a bit more humbly. But they're just so reminiscent of that kid everybody knows and nobody likes, yet he/she still thinks they're really cool, and it really just makes you dislike them even more. The 2007 Phillies lost all my respect at "team to beat." Just sayin'.
This kid looks stupid...like the PhilliesBack to the Metsies, though. 3 out of 4 was nice this weekend, don't get me wrong. But when you win the first three games of a series, against a division rival, in relatively smooth fashion, it hurts to not go in for the kill. 3 out of 4 would have been great if they had split the doubleheader on Friday, but, but...come on! We won the fight, but we could have punched our opponent so much harder!
The Mets do this too often. Yesterday is more excusable for the simple fact that Mike Pelfrey was pitching instead of Tom Glavive, or Orlando Hernandez, or John Maine, or Oliver Perez, or...you get the idea, but how many times this year have we had another team 2-0, or 3-0, in a series, and failed to complete the sweep? Winning series is the fundamental thing, but a team should pat only itself on the back for winning a series if they've lost one of the first (usually 2) games and won the rubber match. Then it's good.
Forgive the second boxing analogy, but who likes a split decision when we could have had a knockout? It's safe to say that the weekend of June 29-July 1, 2007 was a successful one in Mets history, but in the end it was still nothing more than a failed sweep. It's unfortunate that at the end of another weekend of Mets baseball, there was still something left to be desired.
Rocky left it all in the ring when he knocked out Ivan DragoA couple other quick notes from the game on Sunday...
-Aaron Heilman is still pouty and unreliable. The Phils 2 decisive runs yesterday came in the 7th with Heilman on the hill. Thanks for ruining the sweep, Aaron!
-Mike Pelfrey still has work to do. 2 earned runs on 102 pitches in 5 innings isn't good enough. He was dishing in the beginning of the game, striking out Ryan Howard in the 2nd inning with an impressive 97 mile-an-hour fastball, but the same problems that earned him a demotion to Triple-A in mid-May were still there. Work on those secondary pitches, Mikey. And don't throw a fastball right down the middle on a 2-0 count with a runner on first and one of the Phillies' best hitters up in the third inning of a tie game. Pelfrey pretty much asked Jimmy Rollins to beat him in that spot.
-Julio Franco is still old, and still can't do anything except ground out in big spots to end games. He was Willie's only option off the bench with Gotay on first and the Mets down 5-3 with 2 outs in the ninth yesterday, but maybe he should have been one of the two pinch hitters Willie used in one spot in the 7th, rather than being saved for prime time, and then not running out his weakly hit ground ball. I really hope it's only a matter of time until Lastings Milledge comes up, replaces Julio Franco on the 25-man roster, and platoons with Carlos Gomez in left. Except for the fact that they're both righties...oh well. Julio still needs to go.
-John Maine should be on the NL all-star team. Cole Hamels shouldn't. End of story.
On to Denver.
(Photo creds to gettyimages, answers.com, nj.com, movieprop.com, photobucket.com)
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