MMO Game Thread: Mets vs Nationals, 1:05 PM (It's War!)

With their National League East lead now down to four games, the New York Mets open a three-game series against the second-place Washington Nationals on Monday at 1:05 PM.

Left-handerJon Niese (8-10, 4.17) gets the all-important series opener and opposes right-hander Max Scherzer (11-11, 2.89) in a showdown at Nationals Park.

The Mets are 5-5 in their last 10 games, 25-13 in its last 38 contests and 28-19 in the second half. They suffered their fourth walk-off loss of the year yesterday and their second in their last three games.

The Mets lead the majors in runs scored (234), home runs (67), RBI (225) and slugging (.489) since July 25 and are 26-13 during that span, the third-best record in the majors.

Mets Starting Lineup

Curtis Granderson – RF
David Wright – 3B
Daniel Murphy – 1B
Yoenis Cespedes – CF
Michael Conforto – LF
Travis d’Arnaud – C
Kelly Johnson – 2B
Wilmer Flores – SS
Jonathon Niese – LHP

The Mets dropped two of three to the Marlins while the Nationals rolled through a four game sweep of the Braves and now the two teams meet in DC for an incredibly important series. The Mets have a four game lead in the division and winning this series is critically important.

You probably know all the math things already but a Nationals sweep puts them 1 back, a Nationals series win puts them 3 back, a Mets series win puts the Nationals 5 back and Mets sweep puts them 7 back.

Terry Collins has already said that this may be the most important start of Niese’s career. He is coming off of three bad starts and needs to put the pieces back together today. On the season he is 8-10 over 26 starts and a 4.17 ERA logging 157.2 innings.

As mentioned earlier, in his last three starts he has allowed 18 ER over 16.1 innings. In the 10 starts before that he had a 2.66 ERA over 64.1 innings. He has had only one start against the Nationals this year and it was a good one where he held them to 1 run over 7.0 innings and 5 K’s despite allowing 9 hits. The Nationals have the following numbers against him:

Uggla 10-33, 3 2B, 3B
Werth 10-32, 2B
Desmond 7-27, 2 2B
Espinosa 9-21, 2B, HR
Zimmerman 8-20, 2B
Harper 3-13
Ramos 6-14, HR
Rendon 4-12, 3 2B

The Mets bats get a tall order as they face Max Scherzer, the pitcher getting paid the big bucks for games like this. He is 11-11 over 27 starts and 184.0 innings with a 2.89 ERA this year including 3 complete games, 2 shutouts. Since the beginning of August he has been more human going 0-3 over 34.0 innings with a 5.82 ERA, but bounced back in his last start allowing 2 ER over 6.0 innings. He somehow has lost both starts against the Mets allowing 3 runs, none earned over 7.2 on opening day and then 1 ER over 7.0 innings about a month later. In 14 innings he has struck out 18 Mets. The Mets have the following numbers against him: