This was such a classic Mets game. They blew their lead late in the game, as they usually do, and lost for the second night in a row at home to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-3. The first 6 innings of the game were as boring as watching the second quarter of Nets-Pistons, but the last 3 innings were as good as Nets-Spurs garbage time. The first scoring came in the game by a two out, two RBI single by Ruben Tejada in the fourth inning. No other team scored again until the top of the seventh, and boy, was the top of the 7th fun. The inning started off with an Andrew McCutchen infield single. Fine. But that was not all. The Pirates hit 4 infield singles in a row to start the inning, 6 hits to start the inning, and 5 infield singles total in the inning. Basically, they had 8 hits in the inning (they had 2 going into the inning) and 5 of them were infield hits and 2 of the outfield hits could have been caught. So the Pirates had one clean hit in the inning and ended up scoring 5 runs. Somehow, there were no errors in the inning, just plays that should have been made. It was very typical Mets. The Pirates added 4 more runs in the top of the 8th before a home run by Justin Turner in the bottom of the inning. Shockingly, (and this is really shocking) it was the Mets first home run in 11 games. Wow. Out of the Pirates 14 hits, 13 of them were singles and the other was a double, so they really just got pretty lucky. Or the Mets played very bad defense. Probably both.
The starting pitching in this game was actually pretty good. Kevin Correia got his major league leading 8th win of the season and his 7th win on the road. He left after 6 innings, so when he left he was not winning the game, but after the Pirates scored 5 runs in the 7th inning, he got the win. Even though Chris Cappuccino gave up 5 runs in 6 innings, they were not at all his fault. They all came on infield singles in the 7th inning and at least half of them should have been outs. I kind of feel sorry for him because he pitched very well and has nothing to show for it. The Mets bullpen tonight was very typical. Pedro Beato gave up 3 runs in 1 inning and Mike O’Connor gave up a run without recording an out. Dale Thayer pitched the last two innings without giving up a run. Congrats Dale! You were the best Mets pitcher of the night!
Now on to the jokes of the game, and there were many of them.
- Raphi was 40 minutes late today, so we arrived in the beginning of the second inning. We missed a great Andrew McCutchen diving play in the first inning, but we saw a replay of it. The Pirates had quite a few nice plays in the field today. I was impressed with their defense. Anyway, we decided to use our Mets-Pirates tickets from Monday to get into the lower level. I bought the cheapest tickets possible on Stubhub. We were very successful with our choice of seat because we were in the third row and did not get kicked out.
- We were sitting in foul territory in right field, which is home to Matt Diaz of the Pirates. People were yelling things at him in our section for most of the game and told him to give them balls. They were most likely drunk. He was smiling for most of the time and not really focusing on the game. Typical Pirate. I think he also tried to talk back jokingly to the people yelling at him but I don’t know what he said. Here are some pictures:
- When Angel Pagan was up, he hit a ball down the first base line that was just foul. It wasn’t foul until he was almost at first base and he took his sweet time walking back home and picking up his bat (he is still officially my favorite Met because I got his hat on Monday). While he was walking back, Citi Field played a full round of R.A. Dickey’s alarm clock. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it is one of the cheers they play at baseball games. Once when R.A. Dickey was pitching, we decided that it is probably The Dick’s alarm clock. It is just very R.A. I enjoyed listening to it.
- People were yelling at Anthony, the Mets ballboy (who we call Carmelo) the whole game to give them balls. He gave out more balls than usual tonight. Also, we noticed that he got a red-haired Mohawk. Interesting. See pictures below:
- Because we were not sitting even close to our real seats and because Raphi forgot his Tote Bag to put peanuts in (bring it tomorrow), we did not start eating our peanuts until the 5th inning when we thought that nobody would kick us out. Surprisingly, these were the first good Shea peanuts we have had and there was not an infinite amount of them. We finished them in a record 1.5 innings. I was impressed.
- In the 8th inning, Pedro Beato intentionally walked Chris Snyder, the catcher for Pittsburgh. As you would have guessed, this move did not work out well for Beato.
- Mike O’Connor came in to pitch in the 8th inning. The reason the Mets brought him in was to pitch to Lyle Overbay, a lefty. O’Connor is the Mets’ lefty specialist (AKA defensive specialist, AKA The Cracker) and yet he still gave up a hit to Overbay. Following this, he walked Ronny Cedeno on 4 pitches and then gave up a hit to Xavier Paul. He did not record an out. Well done Mike.
- During all the Mets pitching changes in the 8th inning, K-Rod was bored. He decided to stare at the game through the wire fence in the bullpen. He probably could not have been more bored and disgusted with his team. The funny pictures are below:
- After the Mets were down by 7 runs in the 9th inning, we decided to move up like usual. We went to our same seats as on Monday when I got Angel Pagan’s hat. When the game ended we went up to the Mets dugout again. Unfortunately, they did not win so they were not celebrating on the field and throwing things into the stands. However, I did receive a ball from a mysterious person in the Mets dugout. He just threw the ball over the top of it so I was not able to see who it was. It was a relatively easy catch seeing how difficult catching a ball usually is. Also, in the 7th inning stretch, I caught another orange Mets and Pepsi Max shirt. I will wear it tomorrow to the game. Below you will find a Mets 7th inning stretch video. Unfortunately I did not take it because I was trying to catch a shirt, but it is still ok. Also, you will see a high quality version of the Mets 7th inning stretch song. It is one of my favorites.
- This game was our first blowout Mets game of the season. Most of the other games have been close, but ironically, their first blowout win or loss comes in a loss to the worst team in baseball in the last 20 years. As I said earlier, the end of this game, especially the 9th inning, was equivalent to garbage time of Nets-Spurs. For those of you who don’t know, this year when the Spurs visited Newark, they terribly blew out the Nets. The entire 4th quarter featured Steve Novak, Chris Quinn, Ben Uzoh, and Quinton Ross. It was disgusting. A similarity between the two games was that people were just yelling at the players and there was no crowd noise because everyone had left, so the players are able to hear everything people say to them. One guy today was yelling at Lyle Overbay for the whole 9th inning. See Mets-Pirates garbage time pictures below:
Your favorite KHH bloggers will be back at the Citi tomorrow for more Mets-Pirates action! It is an early start, 1 PM, but we hope to go for batting practice at 11:30. There is also a high possibility that we will go to Red Bulls-Crew on Saturday in Harrison. Sam may even join us! We are looking forward to it.