Mets-Pirates Game 1 Recap

Memorial Day Baseball!

The Mets won their second game in a row tonight with a 7-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. They outplayed the Pirates in all aspects of the game and had a fairly easy win, though there were some nervous moments. The scoring started in the game with a long 2-run homer to left by Chris Snyder, the Pirates’ catcher, of all people. However, the Mets came back with 2 runs in the bottom of the inning. It was one of the most disgusting innings of baseball I have seen all season, but more on that later. The Mets added a run in the 5th, but Pittsburgh countered with a run in the top of the 7th to tie the score. In the bottom of the 7th, Josh Thole had a clutch double, bringing in two runs and giving the Mets the lead for good. It was one of Josh’s first clutch moments of the year. He has been terrible in crunch time until tonight. The Mets hitting tonight was impressive. 5 players had multi-hit games, and the only players who did not record hits were Dillon Gee and Willie Harris, though Willie made up for it with his defense (more on that later). For the first time this year, I was actually a little bit impressed with the Mets. They actually played well and closed out a game for once. Even though they should have scored a few more runs with all the hits they got, they scored enough to win. Also to note is that of the Mets 15 hits, 13 of them were singles and the other two were doubles. Interestingly enough, they did this without Jose Reyes and Jason Bay in the lineup.

Carlos Beltran, who went 2-4

Now on to the pitching. Dillon Gee was pretty excellent tonight, giving up 3 runs (2 on a home run in the second inning), 5 hits, no walks, and 8 strikeouts. The strikeout/walk ratio there was key to his great performance, and 5 base runners in 7 innings is good as well. The Mets bullpen finished off the game with Izzy and K-Rod pitching scoreless innings. For the Pirates, Charlie Morton was good enough. He pitched 6 innings and gave up 3 runs (only 1 earned) and did not walk a batter, though he gave up 11 hits. The problem for the Pirates was the bullpen. It gave up 4 runs to the Mets in 3 innings and Daniel McCutchen got the loss.

K-Rod

It is time for the Shea Experience and the jokes from the game. I will start at the beginning.

• As we arrived at Shea, we noticed the Chevrolet shirt give-away located outside the stadium. We had arrived early to see batting practice because we were bored out of our minds at home. We filled out a form and got a free Mets shirt. I love ripping people off like that. I wonder how many people will actually buy a Chevrolet after visiting that booth and not just doing it for the shirt. Raphi decided to put his shirt in his Mets Tote Bag from Saturday. It was still covered in peanuts and it covered the shirt in peanut grossness. More on peanuts later. Raphi, I still have your shirt, by the way.
• Because we were so early, we decided to go to the Mets box office and ask about tickets for the Ecuador-Greece soccer match at Citi Field on June 7th. We ended up buying tickets and we will be in attendance. We are looking forward to it. Also, we will be sitting in section 401!!! If you do not know about this, I think that this will be all you need to learn about it.
• When we arrived to batting practice, the Pirates were practicing. The mets practiced before we arrived so we did not get the chance to observe them. The Pirates were extremely boring, so after watching a while in the first row, we went up to sit in the shade. The Pirates hit very few home runs during batting practice. No wonder they are so bad. See pictures below:

Pirates Batting Practice

Pirates Batting Practice

• Raphi got Shea Fries for dinner. As he went to the ketchup stand to put ketchup on his fries, he pushed on the ketchup knob too hard and squirted ketchup all over the Mets employee standing by the stand. Luckily, she did not get mad but she definitely could of. Raphi was embarrassed and I thought it was very funny.
• Today was Memorial Day. To open the game, planes flew over the stadium after the national anthem and they were extremely loud and annoying. See video below. Also, Memorial Day baseball is kind of a joke. People make too big a deal about it. People came here to see baseball (if you consider Mets-Pirates baseball) not honor soldiers. Just play ball!

• We tried to Gadzuric our peanuts in Raphi’s Tote Bag again tonight, but we were less successful because of the people in front of us. Still, here are the peanut pictures:

Peanuts in our Tote Bag with Peanut Bag and All Star Ballots

Peanuts in our Tote Bag with Peanut Bag and All Star Ballots

Peanuts in our Tote Bag with Peanut Bag and All Star Ballots

• Just a note from the game, the cleanup (4th place) hitters tonight were second baseman Neil Walker for the Pirates and Daniel Murphy for the Mets. All I can say about that is ew. No wonder these teams are so bad.
• We noticed while looking at the scoreboard tonight that Pittsburgh shortstop Ronny Cedeno may have braces. I checked on the internet for it and found nothing, but I have my suspicions. We’re on to you, Ronny.
• The bottom of the second inning tonight might be the worst inning of baseball I had ever seen. The badness started with runners on second and third and Jason Pridie at the plate. Pridie strikes out on a normal pitch, but the ball goes past the catcher. I have no idea why he didn’t catch it. Pridie was safe at first and a run scored. But that was not all. The next batter, Ruben Tejada swung and hit the ball about 5 feet. A run scored from third and Ruben was safe at first. Then, with Dillon Gee at the plate, there was a wild pitch and the runners went to second and third. Gee then missed a bunt and ended up striking out. It was truly a terrible inning.
• Do you know those annoying guys who walk down the aisles at sporting events trying to sell memorabilia? Well tonight, we witnessed a very honest vendor. He was selling foam fingers and baseball pennants on sticks. While he was walking by, he was saying, and I quote, “Get your overpriced items here!”. What a great and honest guy. People still ended up buying from him.
• In between innings the Mets have something called “Mets Phrase Game” which is a little like hangman. Tonight, the clue they gave was something like “a holiday celebrated in America for our soldiers”. Hmmm… I wonder what that can be on Memorial Day. The guy playing the game obviously won.
• The singers singing “God Bless America” in the 7th inning stretch were awful to say the least. See pictures below:

Memorial Day Baseball!

Awful 7th Inning Stretch Singers

• Despite going 0-5 from the plate, Willie Harris had a few great defensive plays. See his best play from ESPN’s Web Gems below. It was number 2 tonight.

• Both teams tonight wore Memorial Day hats. The Pirates’ hats were especially bad, as they were red. They were really disgusting. The Mets’ hats were better but not great. See pictures of this as well as other pictures of the game below.

Justin Turner

Carmelo the Ball Boy

Murph in Action, Dillon "Alonzo" Gee on the Mound

Lyle Overbay

Garrett Jones

Pirates Outfield

Murphy and Tejada

Pirates Garrett Jones

K-Rod and Willie Harris

Andrew McCutchen on First

Andrew McCutchen on First

Lyle Overbay

• Before the Pirates batted in the 9th inning, we stealthily sneaked our way from close to the right field foul pole to behind the Mets dugout. We did this so that we can get a better view and also see the Mets players exit after the game was over. When the players left, they were happy that they won. When this happens, once in a while a player throws something of his into the crowd. Tonight, Angel Pagan was happy because he had just made a great catch in the 9th inning that didn’t save the game, but it did preserve the win. I was in the second row of people behind the dugout so I did not think that I would have a chance at catching Angel’s hat as he was throwing it. I was wrong. I leaped into the air (yes, it was this dramatic) and got my fingers on it. I tugged it away from 5 other hands and brought it low where I ripped it away from one last person. It was mine. I took it away with authority just like Dan Gadzuric would. It was basically the same thing as GadZoom dunking over Kwame Brown, the other people in the stands being Kwame Brown. Yes, I am declaring myself Dan Gadzuric. This is among the coolest things that I have gotten at sporting events, along with Jason Kidd’s armband with a #5 on it and Cliff Robinson’s shoes. It was kind of sweaty and gross, but I washed it when I got home. It was a great moment for me and KHH fans everywhere. See pictures below:

Angel Pagan's Hat

Angel Pagan, #16

Our next KHH event will be either Wednesday, Thursday, or both when the Mets host the Pirates again. The Mets do not return home again after that until the day before I go to camp, so we will be off from Mets action for a while. However, we will be returning to the Citi on June 7th to see Ecuador and Greece in a soccer game and we might also see some Red Bulls action one of the next two weekends. Until next time, so long.

Mets-Nets Comparisons: Pitchers

Johan Santana and Deron Williams.

This is an easy comparison. Both of these players were taken away from teams in the middle of nowhere (Minnesota and Utah) and brought to the Big City. One difference is that Santana decided to come here (yes, someone actually wanted to come to the Mets) while DWill was traded here from Utah. He still has yet to make a decision about where he will play after this season, but I hope he will stay with the Nets when they move to Brooklyn. Both of these players were superstars on their old teams, but since coming to their new teams, they have been very injury prone. Everyone knows that they are still very good, but right now it is a question of how much they care about their teams and how much they want to win.

Johan Santana and Deron Williams

Jonathan Niese and Jordan Farmar.

Both of these guys are solid, professional players. Even though Niese is the number 2 starter for the Mets, he would be a pretty good 4 or 5 pitchers for a normal team. Farmar is the backup point guard for the Nets and he is always capable of making a big shot or coming up with a big play defensively. He is a very solid backup point guard. As a coach, you would want both of these players on your team (this can be said for very few Mets and Nets).

Jordan Farmar and Jonathan Niese

Francisco Rodriguez and Sasha Vujacic.

Both of these guys are crazy. They are way too emotional and it often causes them to play terribly in big situations. They both want to succeed too much and it causes them to make bad decisions in big moments. Sometimes, these players are good, though. Sasha has made some big shots in his Nets career and K-Rod has a pretty good save percentage since coming to the Mets. A similarity between them is that they both came from very good Los Angeles area teams (Angels and Lakers) and went to very bad New York area teams. One difference is that Sasha is in a lovely relationship with Maria Sharapova while K-Rod enjoys beating up the father of his girlfriend. I wonder if they every got married?

Francisco Rodriguez and Sasha Vujacic

Tim Byrdak and Dan Gadzuric.

These guys are both terrible. Tim Byrdak is one of the Mets’ “lefty specialists” which is always a bad thing. He pitched terribly last night allowing the winning run to score for the Phillies and he has been bad since joining the Mets this year. GadZoom is also a newcomer to the Nets. They acquired him from Golden State at the trade deadline and he has been absolute garbage since coming to Newark. One difference is that GadZoom has more authority than Byrdak. Byrdak has very little authority. I would not be afraid to beat him up in a bar.

Tim Byrdak and Dan Gadzuric

Mike O’Connor and Stephen Graham.

Ok, now we are getting to the really good ones. These guys are both the deadly term “specialists”. The Cracker is one of the Nets’ defensive specialists (along with Q) and brings absolutely nothing to the table offensively. Mike O’Connor is one of the Mets’ lefty specialists, even though he does not know how to get lefties out. Last night, he faced one batter, Chase Utley (a lefty), gave up a hit to him, blew the Mets’ lead, and got the loss. This is something that The Cracker would do as well. We have seen him countless times be guarding the player on the other team that scores in the last few minutes of the game. He is a defensive specialist that doesn’t know how to play defense. Also, his only block of the year came against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Below, you will see him being blocked by the Oklahoma City Thunder. Typical Cracker.

Mike O'Connor and Stephen Graham

Pedro Beato and Orien Greene.

Both of these players are really random. Pedro Beato is a guy that the Mets just stole out of the Caribbean and put him into the majors. Maybe that is why he always seems to blow leads for the Mets. Orien Greene was the only player that I could not find a picture of in a Mets/Nets uniform, so I had to use his D-League team picture from the Utah Flash. This proves how random he is. He only scored 3 points for the Nets in three games this year and one field goal-a dunk-against Philadelphia in a blowout loss (I was there, it was a great moment for Orien). He is probably rotting away in the D-League right now as we speak.

Pedro Beato and Orien Greene

Dillon Gee and Brandan Wright.

Both of these guys have some potential, but right now they pretty much suck. Dillon “Alonzo” Gee has had some nice starts from the Mets recently, but I definitely cannot rely on him to do it again. All of his starts seem out of nowhere. Brandan Wright had a ton of potential coming out of North Carolina, but since arriving in the NBA he has done absolutely nothing. He was acquired by the Nets in the Gad trade and got one start with the team this year. In the start he played the first 3 minutes of the game and then got pulled for not playing defense and never returned. This was very typical from him. Both of these guys may be good in the future, but right now, no.

Dillon Gee and Brandan Wright

Yankees-Mets Recap

As Raphi put it, this was our first baseball surprise of the year and it was not predictable at all. The Mets won 2-1 in the Bronx to improve to a somewhat respectable 3-5 when we have attended their games and more importantly for them, 22-22 on the year. That is surprising enough. The Yankees fell to 1-1 in front of the KHH bloggers and 23-20 overall. After we saw R.A. Dickey lose at home to the Rockies, Astros, and Giants, he was able to win on the road at Yankee Stadium. Do you get what I mean by unpredictable? Freddy Garcia pitched well, but still got hit with the loss. There were plenty more surprises from this game but I will start from the beginning.

The first surprise of the night was that Raphi was less than 20 minutes late. This gave us enough time to go buy pizza before arriving at the Stadium. I had 2 slices and Raphi had 0, probably a very wise choice. As we were walking to the Stadium, we passed someone selling bags of peanuts on the street. There was one that was salted for $3 and one that was unsalted for $2. The cheaper one was also the much bigger one, so we thought, why not? and bought the unsalted peanuts and took them into the stadium with us. I don’t like to start eating them until at least the end of the first inning, especially because I had just eaten 2 slices of pizza, but we started eating them at 7:25, just as the 2nd inning was beginning. Before long, we had realized what we had just gotten ourselves into. This bag was ginormous, much bigger than any other peanut bag that we had had prior (and some of those were too big to handle). By the time we were a third of the way done, I was already completely sick of them and wanted to throw the rest away, but I could not disrespect the peanuts like that. We had to finish them. During the 7th inning stretch, I looked down at the peanuts and thought that I was finally almost done. The problem was that I felt that way until the top of the 9th inning when we finally finished them. We had been eating them nonstop and we only finished them at 9:45. We had been constantly eating them the whole game and it took us almost two and a half hours to finish them. Raphi deserves a lot of credit for finishing the peanuts, but I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame of peanut eaters for my performance tonight. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of how many peanuts we ate:

Full Bag of Peanuts

Empty Bag of Peanuts

Ripped Peanuts

What a Catastrophe

So Gross

Even though we ate all those peanuts, there was still more food that we ate. As I mentioned before, I ate 2 slices of pizza before the game. Raphi also bought a hot dog midway through the game to get the peanut taste out of his mouth. He should enter a Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest. He can compete against Mark Sanchez (it was against the Raiders, by the way).

Also from Mark Sanchez (we need some football in this blog):

Once the game started and I had already eaten many of the peanuts, my mouth longed for something other than the peanuty badness. I decided to go search for a drink. The first drink I saw that didn’t have a huge line and wasn’t water was a lemonade stand. I didn’t really want this, but I had no other options. And it looked bad too. It looked like they just put a lemon in a cup of water. But I was very wrong. It was delicious; maybe the best lemonade I had ever drank. It was so good that Raphi also got one later. Here’s a picture of our almost finished lemonades:

Delicious Lemonades

We have calculated that we must have eaten about 3,500 calories combined tonight. That is 1,750 each, almost the amount that you are supposed to have for a day in 4 hours. When I got home I looked at my stomach in the mirror and it looked bigger than it was before, I’m not lying. And I feel like I have to throw up. Enough about food; on to the game.

The Mets lineup was pretty gross tonight. The 5-9 hitters were Fernando Martinez (also the DH, what a joke), Justin Turner, Josh Thole, Jason Pridie, and Ruben Tejada. How that team beats the Yankees, I have no idea. Justin Turner had a bunt single in his first at-bat and had 3 hits in the game. He also broke a Mets record for the most consecutive games with an RBI for a rookie with 6. Wow, Justin Turner now holds a Mets record. Another surprise was that the only run the Yankees scored the whole game came on a Mark Teixeira first row home run in the third inning. Their offense was pretty disgusting to say the least. Yet another surprise: the Mets bullpen was shockingly good. If you remember my article from a few days ago, Mike O’Connor pitched a great 7th inning and Izzy and K-Rod shut the door for the Yankees. However, Joba and David Robertson pitched well out of the Yankees’ pen.

After attending this game, I feel the need to rant at Mets fans. First, I want to take you back to a few days ago on Wednesday. There must have been less than 1,000 people at Shea to watch the Mets take on the Nationals, and the fans that were there were very unspirited. There was not much cheering. Heck, I was able to distract Gorzy to make a terrible pick off throw. Now fast forward to today. There were probably at least 10,000 Mets fans at Yankee Stadium. And most of them didn’t honestly care about the Mets. They just want the Yankees to lose. They want to prove to all the Yankees fans that their team is bad because they lost to the lowly Mets. They don’t even think that their own team is good. They only want to annoy Yankees fans. They know that their team has no chance at the playoffs, so they might as well try to ruin the Yankees’ chance. That is all. Now it’s time for a few more pictures:

Random Fernando Martinez Stat

Yankees

The Field

Our Seats

K-Rod

In other baseball news, after the Nationals were blanked 2 nights in a row against the Mets, they scored 17 tonight against the Orioles. Typical. Blue Jays pitcher Jo-Jo Reyes pitched 7 innings and had a 2-0 lead, but the bullpen could not hang on and the Blue Jays still lost. Of note is that Jo-Jo Reyes has not gotten a win in 26 straight starts. That’s 26. Reyes is 5-18 for his career in 45 starts and his last win came on June 13, 2008 against you guessed it, the Mets (just kidding, the Angels, but I wish it was the Mets). Did you think that Jason Giambi’s power streak was just good for one game? Well it wasn’t. The Giambino went yard again tonight in Milwaukee. Keep it going big fella!