An El Of A Game By Duque

It was also so great to hear Gary, Ron and Keith in the booth. It had been so long since hearing the threesome in a meaningful game!

So much for pitchers taking it easy during the first few weeks of the season. Old Man Orlando went seven strong innings tonight, threw over 100 pitches, and got the win in the second game of the season. More great leather was flashed around the diamond by the Mets, especially by Jose Valentin. Man, this Valentin kid could really be something huh? His double-play partner Jose Reyes went 1-4 with a walk and was on base enough times to score 2 runs.

I loved what we saw out of El Duque, but not so much what we got from The Show. He retired the first two batters of the 8th and had a chance to put the Cardinals away, but he walks Eckstein and then after getting ahead with an 0-2 count on Duncan, he let it go to 3-2 before giving up a hit. Mopeyface Heilman came in, challenged Pujols and got the out. That's the kind of stuff I love. Yeah sometimes you lose those battles against the great hitters but when you beat them like Heilman did it's so gratifying. On the complete complete opposite end of the spectrum were the Cardinals wimping out and pitching around Valentin to load the bases for El Duque. That worked out nicely too, right? If you don't trust your pitcher to face the 8th place hitter with two outs, then do you really have any confidence in him at all? I know this goes on a lot and usually works out because pitchers are usually automatic outs, but on the flip side how great is it for a pitcher to face the 9th place hitter to start the next inning?

Anyway, enough on that, but one more complaint - Is Kevin Burkhardt just the worst interviewer ever? He's got some experience under his belt now but still it's so obvious that he's not listening to the person he's interviewing; he's just sitting there nodding his head and pretending to listen when really he's just waiting to get his next lousy question in.

But back to the game - Wagner came in the ninth and did his job. He earned his first save of the season, Duque gets his first win, and he even got two RBI's too.

Mets will try to break out some early season brooms tomorrow night. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2 for all you out of market fans out there. Shawn Green went 0 for 4 with 2 K's and left 5 men on base tonight making it an easy decision for Willie to give Lastings Milledge a start against Braden Looper tomorrow. I guess we'll see... John Maine takes the hill. Lets Go Mets!

Mets (2-0) over Cardinals by the score of 4-1
Yahoo! Game Recap
Mike V's Met Of The Game - No question, El Duque

Transplanted ex-Mets:
Preston Wilson,ph 0-1