Hello everybody and welcome to another sunshine-filled day of Mets baseball. We hope our friends in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast are safe and sound as Hurricane Isaac continues to swarm. Meanwhile, the weather in the Northeast couldn’t be better as the Mets try to take another from the Phillies tonight.
Last night New York came from behind not once, but twice in a 9-5 victory that lasted 10 innings. Tonight was supposed to be ace against future ace as Cole Hamels was scheduled to take the mound versus Matt Harvey. However, Hamels has been scratched due to illness and will be replaced by Tyler Cloyd, who will be making his major league debut.
First pitch is 7:05 p.m. from Citizens Bank Park in South Philly. You can catch the game on SNY or listen to Howie and Josh on WFAN 660.
#Mets Wednesday lineup at Philadelphia: Tejada-6, Murphy-4, Wright-5, Davis-3, Duda-7, Hairston-8, Baxter-9, Shoppach-2, Harvey-1— New York Mets (@Mets) August 29, 2012
It’s really nice to get down to the bottom of the order and know that there’s at least a small chance something exciting might happen. Kelly Shoppach has been a nice pickup so far for the Mets, but it won’t mean anything if they just let him go in the offseason.
Tonight’s 7:05
#Phillies lineup vs Mets. Cloyd vs. Harvey. Phillies.com, CSN, 1210 WPHT/94 WIP: twitter.com/Phillies/statu…— Phillies (@Phillies) August 29, 2012
Thanks to some solid small sample performances from guys like Laynce Nix and Kevin Frandsen, Philly’s lineup hasn’t been totally miserable since the Pence and Victorino trades. John Mayberry is an out machine in the five spot, though.
Pitching Match-up
NYM — Matt Harvey (2.75 ERA, 43 SO, 15 BB)
Harvey’s excellent start last week in Colorado was overshadowed by the fact that the Mets could barely score against Jeff Francis, but it still counts as a great start. In fact, Harvey has 17 strikeouts and just three walks in his last two starts, so Mets fans should either be really excited for tonight’s start, or pissed that the six-man rotation caused him to get six days off in a row. Chris Young struggled early in last night’s game after a long layover, so it will be interesting to see how Harvey starts out.
PHI — Tyler Cloyd (2.35 ERA, 93 SO, 38 BB at AAA Lehigh Valley)
The righty from Bellevue, Nebraska was selected by Philadelphia in the 18th round of the 2008 draft, and now he’s finally ready for the big show. Cloyd started the season at double-A Reading, but he was quickly promoted to Lehigh Valley after four very strong starts. At triple-A, Cloyd didn’t show much of a drop-off. He’s got a solid strikeout-to-walk ratio over the course of 142 innings. Cloyd is more of a control guy who doesn’t miss a ton of bats, so the Mets should get some decent pitches to hit. Of course, if they hadn’t broke out of the doldrums last night, I wouldn’t be very confident in the Mets’ ability to hit any decent pitches. Let’s hope yesterday was a sign of things to come.
