Sunday, June 17, 2007

Kill me now

The Mets are just awful at everything right now. They lost five of six games this week, outscored 37 to 17. Only once did a Mets starter pitch more than 5.2 innings or allow fewer than four runs. The team hit just .243/.285/.328. And the bullpen ERA was 4.41. Oliver Perez pitched a heck of a game against Roger Clemens, though.

The Mets scored three or fewer runs in five of these six games, with an eight-run outburst on Saturday padding the team's averages considerably. Right in the middle of the ineptitude were Carloses Delgado and Beltran. Delgado's been "slumping" more or less all season long while Beltran is playing hurt, just as he did in his disappointing 2005, with similar results. This week the pair had just six hits with a combined line of .157/.157/.196. That's right, neither of them even drew a walk. The Carlos Of The Week Award clearly goes to Mr. Gomez, who had seven singles and one free pass in these six games. A lot of Mets had a bad week, but this team is never going to turn things around with Delgado and Beltran playing this poorly. If the Mets weren't already down three outfielders it would probably make sense for Beltran to hit the DL and rest his sore quad for a couple of weeks. Since that's out of the question, I'm not sure how this team is going to regain its stroke.

Facing a Twins team (34-33) with one of the top few pitching staffs in the American League is probably not going to help. The Mets (37-30) are still atop the NL East, but their margin over the Braves is down to just 1.5 games. John Maine (6-4, 3.05), Jorge Sosa (6-2, 3.42) and Oliver The Great (7-5, 2.93) will take the mound for New York in this series. Carlos Silva (4-7, 4.07), Johan Santana (6-6, 3.19) and Scott Baker (1-2, 7.33) will likely have some of their best starts of the year in opposition.

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