The Game

In their biggest game of the season, the New York Mets got eight solid innings out of their ace Johan Santana. He exited with a 5-2 lead in the ninth (thanks in part to home runs by the red hot Ramon Castro and the even hotter Carlos Delgado). The bullpen then gave up six runs in a disastrous ninth inning and the game ended with the Philadelphia Phillies taking sole possession of first place thanks to their 8-6 victory at Shea Stadium Tuesday night. My apologies for not going into much more detail on this recap, but I’m quite sure all the readers on this site don’t want to relive this one either. A few thoughts though:

- What the hell was Luis Aguayo thinking in letting Endy Chavez get thrown out at the plate by a mile with nobody out and your cleanup hitter coming up?!?!?!? Indefensible. The third and the seventh could have been HUGE innings.

- Pedro Feliciano is not the same pitcher he was over the past couple of years.

- Everybody complaining that Johan Santana should have completed the game needs to relax. While I personally would have liked him to start the ninth inning with a short leash, if your bullpen can’t get three outs with a three run lead then you don’t deserve to be=2 0a first place team. Period.

The Haiku

TV-punching loss
Aguayo: double agent?
Bullpen one man short

The Win Probability Added Graph

The Credits

Recap by Chuck Buono
Haiku by Howard Megdal