Jon Niese tied his longest outing of the year going 8 innings against Atlanta on Sunday night.
The Mets entered Sunday night’s game looking to salvage a win from their three-game series against the Braves and did just that as Jon Niese had one of his best starts of the season, allowing only a Freddie Freeman solo home run and pitching a solid eight innings.
To sum up the first eight innings, the Mets jumped out early on Braves’ starter Ben Sheets as David Wright and Ike Davis had RBI singles in the bottom of the first inning to take a 2-0 lead. Freeman cut the lead in half with his home run in the top of the second but the Mets regained their two-run cushion with a Ruben Tejada RBI base hit.
The Mets tacked on a run in the fifth on another RBI knock by Davis, followed by a solo home run of the bat of Jordany Valdespin in the sixth inning to expand the Met lead to 5-1. New York added their sixth and most important run in the bottom of the eighth after a Valdespin single and stolen base and was brought in by the next batter Andres Torres to bump the score up to 6-1.
Niese pitched well through the eight innings allowing the aforementioned Freeman homer and walked only a pair while striking out six before giving way to the bullpen to close out the game in the top of the ninth inning.
Josh Edgin was first up and he walked Larry Wayne ‘Chipper’ Jones followed by a plunk of Freeman, he got the next two batters via strikeout and pop up but walked Paul Janish which was enough for Terry Collins. Next up out of the bullpen was Frank Francisco who promptly walked the next two batters to score a pair of runs with the Braves not getting a hit to that point until Martin Prado stepped in.
Prado reached out and dropped a double into right field to score a pair and cut the Mets lead down to a single run at 6-5. Up next out of the ‘pen was Jon Rauch who has some closers experience and even had a save earlier this year to his credit. Rauch got slugger Jason Heyward to strike out as catcher Rob Johnson dropped the ball and threw down to Davis to barely retire the Braves and give the Mets a victory.
Up Next: The Mets head to the ‘Queen City’ to take on the Reds on Tuesday at 7:10 p.m. when they send Chris Young (3-6; 4.87 ERA) to the hill to take on Cincinnati Ace Mat Latos (10-3; 3.81 ERA).
