MMO Game Thread: Mets vs Marlins, 7:10 PM

The New York Mets and Miami Marlins will play the second game of their series tonight at 7:10 PM at Marlins Park.

For the Amazins, Jonathon Niese (5-9, 3.63) gets the starting assignment and he will oppose left-hander Brad Hand (1-2, 5.12) for the Marlins.

New York has won four straight games and is 7-2 in its last nine games. They are 16-10 in their last 26 games and 28-17 vs. the NL East.

Curtis Granderson has reached base safely in 18 straight games, going 24-75 (.320) with a .393 on-base percentage. The streak is the longest active streak in the National League.

Last night was the 29th time this year the Mets allowed one or fewer runs. It’s the second-most in the majors. The Mets are 25-4 in those games.

Mets Starting Lineup

Curtis Granderson RF
Yoenis Cespedes LF
Juan Uribe 3B
Lucas Duda 1B
Travis d’Arnaud C
Wilmer Flores 2B
Ruben Tejada SS
Jonathon Niese P
Juan Lagares CF

Sunday was fun. Monday was fun. Fun is fun! The Mets rolled into Miami very, very early Monday morning in a virtual tie for first place with the Nationals and quickly erased any concerns that traveling all night would cause them to show up flat.

Bartolo Colon looked like a different pitcher compared to the one that pitched last Wednesday as he held the Marlins to one run over 8.0 innings. Michael Conforto kicked things off for the offense with a 3-run bomb and Yoenis Cespedes had a breakout game with three doubles and 4 RBIs as the Mets routed the Marlins 12-1.

Jon Niese looks to keep the good times going, he’s 5-9 over 121.1 innings over 20 starts with a 3.63 ERA this season. In his last start he held the Padres to 1 ER over 6.0 innings with 6 K’s, but we all know what eventually happened in that start. It was a good bounce back from his previous start where he allowed 6 ER over 3.0 innings.

His one start against the Marlins this year was a forgettable one where he allowed 4 ER, 5 total, over 4.0 innings but it was also during that awful stretch he had in May. The Marlins have the following numbers against Niese:

Prado 7-35, 4 2B, 3B
McGehee 3-15, 2B
Solano 6-16, 3 2B
Hechavarria 4-14, 3B
Yelich 5-12, 2B
Gordon 4-7, 3B
Dietrich 1-6, 3 K

The Mets will look to keep it going against Brad Hand who is 1-2 over 27 games, 3 starts over 45.2 innings with a 5.12 ERA. Hand has spent most of his time as a reliever this season and probably won’t see an extreme amount of pitches this outing.

He had a string of starts between May 27 and June 8 where he allowed 8 ER over 11.2 innings, which is heavily influenced by a game where he allowed 6 ER over 0.2 innings (so outside of that he was great). The Mets have the following numbers against Hand: