Mets Lineup
- Collin Cowgill – CF
- Daniel Murphy – 2B
- David Wright – 3B
- Ike Davis – 1B
- Marlon Byrd – RF
- Lucas Duda – LF
- John Buck – C
- Ruben Tejada – SS
- Matt Harvey – RHP
Game Notes
On Opening Day, the starting lineup included three players making their Mets debut: Collin Cowgill, Marlon Byrd and John Buck. The trio combined to go 6-14 (.429) with five runs and seven RBI.
Frank Francisco and Pedro Feliciano each hrew 1.0 inning in a simulated game yesterday in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Francisco is on the 15-Day Disabled List, retroactive to March 22, while he recovers from right elbow surgery, while Feliciano continues to gain strength at extended spring training.
Johan Santana underwent surgery to repair a the tear in the capsule in the front of his left shoulder. Santana will miss the season for the second time in three years and has likely pitched his last game as a Met. The Mets still owe Santana $31 million.
Game Preview
The Mets look to repeat their opener tonight as they take on the Padres for game two of the season. On Monday, the Mets continued their Opening Day success mashing the Padres by the score of 11-2 in a game that featured great pitching by Niese (and a great debut from Rice) and a lot of timely hitting up and down the lineup. The new guys contributed a lot with hits and RBI’s by Byrd and Buck, topped off with a grand slam by Colin Cowgill. Today Matt Harvey will make his season debut as he squares up against Clayton Richard.
According to Terry Collins, Harvey will be using his changeup more, something that he’s worked on all spring and to great effect.
“When the season was over, we said, ‘Hey look, your changeup has got to be another pitch you need to use.’ And all Matt Harvey did was come to Spring Training and worked hard to use it, and it became a very effective pitch. So he’s made adjustments himself already.”
Matt Harvey had a tremendous 2012 season going 3-5 over 10 starts while pitching 59.1 innings with a 2.73 ERA. Even more impressive, in that near 60 inning stretch, he walked only 26 batters while striking out 70. That’s a K/9 of 10.6. He made only a handful of negative starts last year, and one was against the Padres where he lasted 5 innings allowing 5 ER over 8 hits while walking 2 and striking out 5. The Padres have the following numbers against him:
Alonso 2-3, 2B, HR
Amarista 0-3
Cabrera 1-3
Quentin 1-3, 2B
Venable 1-3, 3B
Maybin 1-2, 2B
The Mets batters look to continue their hot start against Clayton Richard. Richard 14-14 over 33 starts and 218.2 innings last season with a 3.99 ERA. His ERA is surprisingly low when you factor in he led all pitchers in hits allowed (228) and homers (31) last year (but also pitched a ton of innings). He was 1-1 against the Mets last year as he totaled 13.0 innings over 2 games allowing 5 ER. The Mets posted the following numbers against Clayton:
Wright 3-12, 2B
Davis 1-9
Byrd 2-6
Tejada 2-6
Turner 2-4
Buck 1-3, 2B
Cowgill 1-3
Duda 0-3
Murphy 1-3, 2B
Let’s Go Mets!
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