Mets Overtake Phillies on Late Rally
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The Phillies held a 3-2 lead on early homers off of lefthander Johan Santana; a first inning 2 run homer by 1st baseman Ryan Howard and a second inning solo shot by Jayson Werth. Kyle Kendrick and reliever Scott Eyre bested Santana for seven innings. But the Mets rallied for 4 runs in the eighth to beat the Phils by a 6-3 score.
The Mets again took over the NL East division lead over the Phillies by 1/2 game. The 3rd place Florida Marlins bested the 4th place Braves. The Marlins are now 5 1/2 games back and the Braves dropped to 15 1/2 games behind.
The Phillies got to Santana for 3 early runs on the homers by Howard and Werth but couldn’t apply the knockout punch. After Werth belted his second inning lead-off homer, the next time the Phillies posed a threat to Santana was in the sixth when leftfielder Pat Burrell led off with a double and Ryan Howard walked. But after two strikeouts with a pop out in between, Santana emerged unscathed in his last inning of work.
In the seventh, reliever Brian Stokes (who emerged as the game-winner) replaced Santana to begin the inning and got into 2 out runners on 1st and 2nd difficulty after a walk and an intentional walk. But Stokes coaxed a ground out by Pat Burrell to end the inning. Catcher Chris Coste led off the inning with a single but was rubbed on a doubleplay grounder by pinch hitter Greg Dobbs.
Kendrick deserved much better than a no-decision as he hung in only allowing 2 runs despite giving up 8 hits in 5 innings. 1st baseman Carlos Delgado singled in the Mets’ 1st run in the first inning after shortstop Jose Reyes led-off with a single and went to 2nd base on a groundout. With the Mets trailing by 3-1, Delgado homered to rightfield to open the fifth inning cutting the Phils lead to 3-2.
Kendrick threw 101 pitches. Lefthander Scott Eyre looked dominating against both left and righthanders retiring all 6 hitters he faced in the sixth and seventh innings, 3 of them on strikeouts.
Meanwhile, AP sportswriter Rob Maaddi describes the Mets’ eighth inning rally for Yahoo sports;
Rudy Seanez (5-4), getting a rare opportunity as a setup man because four other relievers were unavailable, retired the first two batters before Delgado hit an opposite-field shot to left to tie it at 3.
Seanez left after Carlos Beltran reached on an infield single. Brad Lidge, who is 31-for-31 in save chances, came in and intentionally walked Ryan Church after Beltran stole second.
Daniel Murphy hit a tiebreaking double… Murphy, a rookie who spent most of the season at Double-A Binghamton, then ripped a double to right to score Beltran for a 4-3 lead, snapping an 0-for-16 slump. Brian Schneider followed with a bloop single down the left-field line that drove in two runs.
Murphy was in Hawaii preparing to play winter ball last September when the Mets crumbled, but he paid close attention to the race.
“It was kind of helpless,” he said. “You always want to see the big league team do well.”
The Mets threw 3 relievers at the Phillies in the eighth and ninth innings and retired the last 6 Philly hitters witout even a whimper.
In short, the offense, which had been relentless against the Dodgers and came back from the dead in Tuesday’s game, returned to snoozing after building an early lead — not a good lead-in to the coming 4 game series with the red-hot Cubs.
For all of the scores, boxscores and recaps on Wednesday’s games, click here.
The Phils now hit the road for perhaps the most important 10 games of the season; 4 against the Central division leading Chicago Cubs to finish off August, followed by 3 vs the Washington Nationals and 3 at Shea stadium, their final 3 regular season games against the Mets. By the way, while the Phils play the NL-best Cubs on Thursday, the Mets have the day off before closing out August with with 3 games in Florida.
In Thursday’s opener against the Cubs, ace lefthander Cole Hamels opposes Ryan Dempster who hasn’t given up more than 2 runs in a game since July 20.
For all of the scores, boxscores and recaps on Thursday’s games, click here.
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