The Game

Mike Pelfrey 2.0 collected his seventh win in eight starts and Carlos “Ponce de Leon” Delgado smacked his 20th homer of the season as the New York Mets defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 7-2 at Shea Stadium on Friday night. The Mets have won 14 of their last 17 games and, thanks to some help from our old pals in Atlanta, now own a two game lead in the NL East.

In a rematch of starting pitchers that previously squared off on July 3rd, Mike Pelfrey and Mitchell Boggs faced off once again on Friday night. While Boggs’ final stat line wasn’t as bad as it was the first meeting, that’s not saying much. Boggs lasted four and a third innings, allowing six earned runs on eight hits while walking four and striking out one. (He was tagged for 10 earned runs over six innings in their 7/3 matchup) With the game scoreless heading into the bottom of the third, the Mets broke through on a David Wright RBI double. One inning later, Jose Reyes delivered a two run triple to give New York a 3-0 lead. and Carlos Delgado’s two run bomb combined with a Jose Reyes RBI single in the fifth made it 6-0 Mets.

Meanwhile, Mike Pelfrey continued his resurgence for the Mets. Big Pelf would go seven solid innings, allowing one earned run (on a Troy Glaus RBI single) on seven hits while striking out five and walking none. This marked the fifth straight outing in which the Mets’ starter would go at least seven innings, their longest such streak since 2001.

The Mets’ scoring was capped off in the seventh as Argenis Reyes hit his first major league home run and was subsequently given the silent treatment in the Met dugout (always funny to me). After Joe Smith came on to pitch a scoreless eighth, things got a little dicey for the Met ‘pen. Duaner Sanchez started the ninth and, for the second straight outing, loaded the bases without recording an out. Pedro Feliciano and Aaron Heilman combined to shut the door while allowing one of Sanchez’s runners to score on a Ryan Ludwick sac fly. In a game that was full of positives, the only negative was that Jerry Manuel had to use four relievers to finish a game in which his starter went seven innings. The Mets look to stay hot on Saturday as they take on Joel Pineiro in the second game of the three game series. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Mets will be sending out a player who hasn’t made a big league appearance in seven years. Brandon Knight will join Nelson Figueroa, Robinson Cancel, and Fernando Tatis in that distinguished category as he makes his 2008 debut for New York.

The Haiku

Pelfrey, Delgado
Stay hot; Argenis joins them
Pujols fans three times

The Boxscore

The Win Probability Added Graph

The Credits

Recap by Chuck Buono
Haiku by Howard Megdal