4
2012
Mets Move Into First Place As Niese Fans Ten, Besting Cards 6-1
An article by 
Recap:
If these past three days have not been enough to convince every last nay-sayer out there that this team is for real, then I don’t know what possibly will. Continuing the theme of sharp play, red hot offense and of course unfathomable pitching, the Mets took the third game of this four-game set 6-1.
Following Santana’s no-no and Dickey’s shutout, Jon Niese looked to keep the theme of “mythical” starting pitching going and that he did. NIese hurled six shutout innings and struck out a career high ten batters. While picking up his fourth win of the season, Niese also lowered his ERA to 4.11 on the year.
Niese’s outing ended on an exciting note when he had first and third with two out in the sixth. After surrendering a base hit to Adron Chambers, David Freese headed home as Andres Torres got to the ball quickly and threw out Freese to end the threat, keeping the Mets scoreless inning streak intact for another frame.
After Bobby Parnell put up yet another goose egg for the Mets, Elvin Ramirez came on for his major league debut and didn’t do as well as hoped for. with a man on second and two down, Ramirez let up the first run by Mets pitching in 25 2/3 innings. He was relieved by Tim Brydak, who got the next batter on the first pitch to end the inning.
The Mets offense continued to amount run support for their starters as they got a run in the form of a Lucas Duda RBI single right off the bat in the bottom of the first. KIrk Nieuwenhuis launched a two run homer in the fourth to hand Niese a three-run lead to work with. It was blown open in the 6th when Kirk hit a RBI single and Torres put it away with a two-run triple to put it out of reach at 6-1.
Frank Francisco came on and pitched yet another scoreless frame to hand the Mets their 30th win of the year and placing them in a three-way tie with the Nationals and the Marlins for first in the National League East.
Hero Of The Game:
Jon Niese, for continuing the theme of unbelievable pitching with one of his best starts in his short Mets career.
Notes:
-Kirk Nieuwenhuis went 3-5 with a home run and three RBIs, raising his average to .301 on the season.
-Andres Torres had himself a three hit game, falling a homer shy of the cycle and having an incredible 8-2 putout to end the sixth.
-With today’s scoreless ninth, Frank Francisco hasn’t surrendered a run in any of his past seven outings while striking out ten batters over that span.
Up Next:
The Mets look to sweep the Cardinals in a Monday matinee with Jeremy Hefner on the hill starting at 1:10pm. (I’ll be there 
)
About the Author: Clayton Collier
Clayton, a Long Island native and die-hard Mets fan, started writing online about three years ago. He is currently a Journalism major with a minor in Broadcasting at Seton Hall University. Although very disappointed with the current state of the team, Clayton remains hopeful that the young prospects in the farm system will bring the Mets back to a respected franchise in baseball once again. Besides writing for MMO, Clayton is also a staff member at 89.5 WSOU, Seton Hall's modern active rock radio station. You can contact Clayton by following him on Twitter: @Clayton_Collier or E-mailing him at MaybeNextYearMets@yahoo.com
11 Comments + Add Comment
NL East Standings
| Team | W | L | Pct. | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Braves | 42 | 30 | .583 | - |
| Phillies | 35 | 37 | .486 | 7.0 |
| Nationals | 34 | 36 | .486 | 7.0 |
| Mets | 27 | 40 | .403 | 12.5 |
| Marlins | 22 | 48 | .314 | 19.0 |
Last updated: 06/19/2013
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You know, I don’t usually call into radio shows but listening to MLBN in the mornings they talk about the Mets great start and how they are doing it with pitching and the offensive numbers don’t add up to where they are in the standings.
Can you get off your lazy ass and look at some stats once in a while. These three games have been great for pitching but the offense has bailed out the pitching all year. While the pitching is next to last overall the offense is 4th in the league in RS, 5th in BA, 3rd in OBP, 4th in OPS, 3rd in OPS+, 3rd in doubles, all while using the second most players in the league at 37. Can we give some damn credit to Hudgens and the Mets hitters?
The power was lacking and their pythag is a few games off. Granted, that is mainly because of the trip to Colorado.
I think the reason the offense has had to “bail out” the pitching is because they haven’t been scoring early in games. At least, not enough. They need their mashers to mash and they weren’t doing that. They’ve scored so many of their runs playing small ball which isn’t going to carry them through a 162 game season. Not in the NL East.
Duda may be coming around now and I think Wright will hit his home runs in spurts, so the runs should be coming in more.
But again, 4th in runs scored and near the bottom in pitching. I don’t think offense was/is the problem. Just as I expected coming into the season.
Ya, but they did have trouble putting up runs in April. Less than 4 runs per game.
Also, remember all those late inning come back wins? All those low scoring close games? That means the startters ahd to get yanked quicker and more work for the pen.
Don’t get me wrong, the pen did not help themselves in most cases, but a lot of that could have been avoided by Ike or Duda finding their groove sooner.
True but again for the season I still say the pitching has been more of a concern overall. The hitting has come around some for sure but I never expected it to be a problem anyway.
They look at the stats TRS…It’s just because they cover the entire league they don’t look at it too often and will run with an analysis that no longer applies due to old data.
We are averaging 4.4 RPG when you compare that to someone like the Cards who have a 9.5 RPG average you tend to look at that and say How did they beat them?
The thing is this team scores the runs when it NEEDS to not like the Cards who just put up a lot of runs and wins with offense.
What has them really baffled though is the team ERA of 4.57 which I suspect has a lot to do with the Pen’s numbers. And it’s misleading because we don’t give up a lot of runs everyday but on days we do give up runs we give them up in bunches!
Of our regular rotation (not Including Pelf’s replacement) they have a 3.46 ERA.
Couple it with those 4.4 RPG and you get the picture of why we have won so many games.
Look at the runs scored off the pen and you see it’s almost as many runs given up as the starters!
When we stay away from the Pen we win the game!
9.5 would have to be a record huh? 5.02 is not that much higher than the Mets. Again, my point is still that the offense is the one that should be getting much of the credit instead of saying they are winning in spite of it.
Well they did lead the league up until they met us! LOL
I think it says more about where they are in the league and the super hot Beltran than anything else.
Beltran leads the NL in HRs (6th league wide) and they play in the worst division in the NL.
We would have the division if we played in the central right now as would the Marlins.
San Fran would be in 2nd if they played there. Atlanta and Philly would be 2nd or 3rd there.
So it’s no surprise they have the numbers they do playing mostly dregs of the league in thier division matchups.
And yes the offense recently deserves some credit but the reason they aren’t is because the story vs the cards has been all about Pitching…You don’t need a lot of runs when you shutout a team and allow only 1 run in three games!
And go back to a week and a half ago, you could hardly say our Offense was really carrying this team, They scored just enough runs to win and we had guys like Duda and Davis struggling, Torres hitting below mendoza too.
They were correct that we had a bad offense about two weeks ago!
They just haven’t updated their assesment because they don’t have the resources to get the recent picture. Since they couldn’t possibly miss the pitching effort (remember everyone myself included) concluded that we were pitchin weak!
Santana has been the difference, Dickey has taken it to another level and Gee has avoided those bad innings he used to have recently as well.
Great game by Niese as he pitched the Mets to a season high 8 games above .500. Listening to ESPN just rave about his curveball inning after innings was great. WFAN reported by the way that Niese was pulled due to fears of an elevated heart rate.
It seems this team just always has a different person stepping up with the bat every night as they fight to win games. If it’s not Baxter it’s Hairston. If it’s not Hairston then it’s Torres. Tonight the Mets got big contributions once again by Capt Kirk.
It has been fun ride so far and I am just going to continue enjoy this for all it’s worth.
Positives has to be Niese and his performance on top of him getting 2 hits as well. Also a hat tip to Torres throwing the runner out at home to end the inning when the game was still close.
Lets go for the sweep today.
LGM!!!