It’s generally a bad idea to give good teams any extra chances to win.
The Mets, who came into the middle of August as arguably the hottest team in baseball, took full advantage of their opponents’ occasional generosity while repressing their own self-inflicted mistakes. The end result was five wins in eight games that week, giving them 21 victories over their previous 27 games.
A rare stumble came at the end of their series with the Giants on August 14.
Rick Reed went five scoreless innings before running out of gas and allowing the Giants to run wild.
In the sixth, San Francisco batted around, plating five runs on four singles, a double, a hit-by-pitch, and a sac fly.
Reed ended his night with a thud only to be succeeded by Dennis Cook, who imploded right from the start.
He walked two of the first three hitters with a Barry Bonds single in-between.
Then, he relinquished RBI hits to four of the next five batters, the last coming against opposing pitcher Russ Ortiz.
After the damage was done, so were the Mets.
11-0 was the score, and only a late Jay Payton solo home prevented a shutout.
The Mets hadn’t lost two straight since July 21 and would keep it that way when they hosted the Rockies — beginning with a Tuesday doubleheader (a makeup of a May 18 rainout).
Armando Benitez saved both victories, the first coming when New York temporarily pushed Pat Mahomes into the rotation and Mike Piazza took the game off.
Both issues were of no concern for the Mets, who overcame a series of baserunning errors and failures with runners in scoring position.
Mahomes, though, was solid (6.2 innings, three earned runs, five hits) and backup backstop Todd Pratt went 3-for-4.
But it was in the front end of the double dip when the season of giving began.
Colorado’s bullpen couldn’t find it’s way (or the plate) in the seventh, kicking off a string of pratfalls which New York exploited for the rest of the week.
After starter Pedro Astacio encountered trouble, a parade of three Rockies relievers each had a rough go of it.
Two bases-loaded walks, a wild pitch, and a groundout turned a 4-2 deficit into a 6-4 lead.
The Mets scored again in the eighth on yet another errant offering.
In the nightcap, it appeared as if Todd Zeile was giving one back to the Rockies.
He allowed Colorado to tie it when he made an error on Todd Hollandsworth‘s ground ball to first base to lead off the seventh.
Hollandsworth scored when Zeile fielded a sharp grounder but had no play at home.
Redemption came in the eighth in the form of a solo homer that Zeile sent over the left-field fence.
Benitez came on and preserved that 4-3 advantage with a 1-2-3 ninth.
Any New York fielding errors the following evening were repressed against Masato Yoshii.
The former Met was greeted harshly by the bats of Zeile, Robin Ventura, Benny Agbayani, and more.
Yoshii departed after five innings, but not before allowing ten hits and nine runs.
He did himself no favors, either — doling out five free passes and also committing a wild pitch that led to the ninth and final run.
However, a seemingly perfect day for New York was marred when Mike Hampton had to leave in the fourth because of a rib injury caused by a swing while batting one inning earlier.
New York hadn’t let injuries effect itself lately and it wouldn’t on the afternoon of this 13-2 thrashing.
The Mets continued their succession of NL West opponents when they traveled to face the team Piazza started with and where feelings on his departure still reverberated.
Piazza left Los Angeles more than two years prior, traded in the wake of a failed contract negotiation, which was contemptuous at best.
He homered in his return last season against Kevin Brown. And in the opener this year, he did the very same thing.
Piazza’s two-run blast off Brown built the Mets advantage to 3-0 in the third inning.
The Dodgers rallied to tie it, but Edgardo Alfonzo was there to rescue New York.
He singled for the third time on the night in the seventh to bring in Joe McEwing.
Piazza provided some insurance with a ninth-inning hit that scored Alfonzo and ensured Mike would have a fifth straight 100-RBI season.
After the Mets bats went quiet and failed to support Rick Reed, they responded Sunday with nine runs on 10 hits.
But they got plenty of help to get there.
In the series finale, the Dodger gifts were coming in rapidly by the eighth inning.
With the score tied at six, Mike Bordick on third and Darryl Hamilton on first, Lenny Harris hit a comebacker to reliever Terry Adams.
He caught Bordick, breaking for home on contact, in a rundown.
Adams threw to third baseman Adrian Beltre, who then threw the ball to the plate — but the toss went over the head of catcher Todd Hundley.
Bordick and Hamilton scored.
The very next batter, Derek Bell, hit a grounder through the legs of second baseman Mark Grudzielanek which allowed another run to score.
The Mets’ 9-6 victory did not end without a scare — specifically, a Mike Piazza injury scare.
He tumbled into the stands of his old stomping grounds when catching a pop up in foul territory in the ninth inning.
With nobody in the front row of seats to break his fall, Piazza landed on the concrete.
He came away relatively unscathed and made the out.
While the Mets had closed in on the Atlanta Braves for the lead in the NL East, they would physically remain far apart for the foreseeable future.
The next time they’d see Atlanta would be September 18 at Turner Field.
Thus, the only ways New York could overcome the team that has dominated the division for the past decade were if it went on a torrid pace or if the Braves had a slump in them.
Neither would happen this week.
Atlanta went 4-2 to counter the Mets’ 5-3 mark.
Thus, the margin between the two clubs on August 20 was the same it was seven days before — with the defending National League champs up by 1.5 games.
But with their 21-6 stretch, New York had strengthened its hold on the Wild Card.
