Playoff baseball is the best.
Relaxing moments in this game were rare and fleeting. The Mets got pretty good hitting and pitching, but defensive lapses, some surprising and some not, helped turned this into a very tense game. Still, the Mets got a win despite replacing their starting pitcher at the last minute, leading one to wonder if anything can stop their march to the pennant.
Given the state of their starting pitching, the Mets will probably have to score a bunch of runs to go anywhere this postseason and Carlos Delgado made sure they got off to a good start. In his first playoff game, the Mets' first baseman drove in the team's first run with a monstrous home run over the center field wall in the fourth inning. He finished the day with four hits, two runs and two RBI. Cliff Floyd also homered in the fourth, giving the Mets their first slim lead.
Meanwhile, John Maine stepped up on short notice and Willie Randolph got him out before the game had a chance to get away from him. He allowed one run on six hits and two walks in four and one-third innings while striking out five. He was helped out by a bizarre play in the second that saw two Dodgers get tagged out at home plate within seconds of each other, but overall he was solid. And the Mets' deep bullpen did a great job backing him up, as Pedro Feliciano and Chad Bradford each got one out in the fifth with two runners on base.
The Mets built their lead to 4-1 in the sixth on one of David Wright's two doubles, but the comfort of that margin was short-lived. With one on and none out in the seventh, Jose Valentin fielded a ground ball and tried to make a very difficult throw to second rather than taking the easy out at first. He got neither out and this snowballed into a three-run inning on Guillermo Mota's watch. Valentin has been very good defensively all year but this lapse could have been very costly.
Also having a rough defensive game, somewhat less surprisingly, was Shawn Green. I don't know if Endy Chavez would have caught the ball that went over Green's head in the second, leading indirectly to the Dodgers' first run. But I think he probably would have gotten his glove on one or both of the doubles hit to right against Billy Wagner in the ninth. Those doubles added up to LA's fifth run while Chavez was standing in left, having replaced Floyd in the eighth. On the other hand, Green did go hitless in four at bats with four runners left on base, so at least he didn't ground into any double plays.
A lot of players contributed to this win. Offensively, in addition to Delgado, Floyd and Wright, Carlos Beltran drew three walks and scored one run and Jose Reyes walked, stole second and scored in the seventh. And the Mets used six pitchers in a way that didn't really tax the bullpen. Mota pitched two innings--one excellent, one not--but Feliciano and Bradford threw a total of eight pitches, Aaron Heilman pitched a perfect eighth and Wagner needed just twenty pitches despite giving up a run on two hits and striking out two.
Tom Glavine (15-7, 3.82) will be the guy hoping to give those relievers some extra rest tomorrow. He's 12-10 with a 3.58 ERA in thirty-two career playoff starts. The Dodgers will counter with Hong-Chih Kuo (1-5, 4.22), who has not started thirty-two playoff games but did pitch well against the Mets one time in September. We'll see if the Mets have figured him out yet as they go for a commanding 2-0 series lead Thursday in prime time.
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