Hello and welcome to another glorious day of Mets baseball. Today the Metsies are in Pittsburgh for a rubber game against the Buccos. On Monday night, New York jumped out to a 4-0 lead but didn’t score again for the rest of the game while Pittsburgh stormed back to win 5-4. Last night, however, the Mets struck back with a thrilling 3-2 victory in which R.A. Dickey recorded a career high 11 strikeouts.
Today Jon Niese takes the mound for New York against Charlie Morton for the Pirates. First pitch is a bright and early 12:35 PM, so make sure to schedule an early lunch if you’re at work and fire up your favorite game tracking website for an afternoon full of Alt+Shifting. Of course the game is also availalbe on SNY and WFAN 660.
Mets lineup
1. Mike Baxter, LF
2. Kirk Nieuwenhuis, CF
3. David Wright, 3B
4. Lucas Duda, RF
5. Daniel Murphy, 2B
6. Ike Davis, 1B
7. Ronny Cedeño, SS
8. Rob Johnson, C
9. Jon Niese, LHP
Mike Baxter is back in the lead-off spot today, and why not? His double with one out in the eighth inning jump started the small rally that the Mets used to win the game last night. Meanwhile, Ike Davis continued his ridiculous season-long slump with an 0 for 4 night with two strikeouts. Just a game in which Ike didn’t strikeout would be considered a moral victory, I think.
Pittsburgh Pirates Lineup
1. Josh Harrison, RF
2. Gorkys Hernandez, LF
3. Andrew McCutchen, CF
4. Neil Walker, 2B
5. Casey McGehee, 1B
6. Rob Barajas, C
7. Yamaico Navarro, 3B
8. Clint Barmes, C
9. Charlie Morton, RHP
Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle has emptied the bench and inserted Gorkys Hernandez and Yamaico Navarro into the lineup today. Hernandez is an outfield prospect who has bounced around a little bit and is still looking for his first major league hit, while Navarro has a bit more big league experience, but hasn’t exactly proven to be able to hit at this level yet. Niese would much rather pitch to either of the youngsters than to Andrew McCutchen, who is hitting .465 against lefties this season.
Pitching Match-up
NYM — Jon Niese (4.85 ERA, 39 SO, 18 BB)
Niese got rocked in his last start, with eight runs and four home runs allowed to Toronto in just three innings. Niese has already let up eight big flies this season compared to only 14 in 28 starts last season. That equals a ridiculous 21.1% of his fly balls going for home runs, which you have to figure is not going to hold up. The good news is that Niese’s strikeout rate is the best it’s been in his career, but he needs to get his walks under control a little bit. If he can keep getting the strikeouts while keeping the ball in the yard, Niese should be just fine this season.
PIT — Charlies Morton (4.35 ERA, 24 SO, 10 BB)
Like Niese, Morton has been killed by the home run ball this season. Even though he’s been an excellent ground ball pitcher since last season (61.8% ground ball rate this year), he’s already allowed five home runs compared to just six last season. Assuming the home runs normalize, Morton seems like your standard worm burner who deals a lot of ground balls and few strikeouts. After a good start in April, Morton has been knocked around a bit in May, when the homer bug has hit. A lot of the Mets’ success today will depend on hitting the ball hard and hopefully finding a hole in the infield.
