Game #64 (36-28) - Am I a Rabbit's Foot?

Well, K-Rod did his best to make it interesting, but the Mets were able to hang on and beat Cleveland tonight to move to 36-28 on the year, their 9th win in their last 10.  The Mets are now 8 games over .500 for the first time since the last day of the 2008 season.  That's right, the Mets are now 9-1 since this blog started.  Just an example of my favorite team make me look like a horse's ass, as usual!  They'll look for 10 out of 11 tomorrow at 7:05 as Jon Niese looks to build on last Thursday's complete game one hitter against Cleveland "ace" Mitch Talbot.  And on to tonight's notes and observations...

• Reyes has been on base to start the game 6 times in a row.  Newsflash, that goes a long way to making the Mets a winning team
• SMALL SAMPLE SIZE ALERT!!!  Since moving back to the 3 hole 5 games ago (a move actively campaigned for on this blog), Wright is hitting 9-22, with 2 HR and 11 RBI.  He's driven in at least one run in each game.  I know the competition has been less than superb, but it's not as if Wright wasn't struggling against bad teams earlier in the year.  He sure seems to be more comfortable in the spot where he's always belonged. 
• Santana's location and velocity looked much better in the first inning tonight, then disappeared in the 2nd inning.  He was back on point after rocky 2nd and 4th innings, giving up only 1 hit over his last 3 frames.  Most troubling was that for the second start in a row, Santana had more walks than strikeouts, having only 1K in each start.  Tonight was the third time in his last 9 starts that Santana managed only a single strikeout - prior to that, Santana had only done that 3 times in his first 239 starts.  It's certainly a troubling trend, and while Johan has battled well, the signs of his decline are everywhere, most significantly on his fastball, the average velocity of which has decreased for the sixth season in a row.  To read more about the trouble trend in Santana's peripherals, read a great piece here, courtesy of the fantastic Fangraphs.
• Nice to see Ike hit that homer that just kept going against Masterson  What wasn't nice about that at bat was watching the cleanup hitter trying to bunt against the shift.  Look, I get that it's a free base hit if it stays fair.  However, in a tie game with my #5 hitter being pretty much useless save for one game this month, Ike's gotta be swinging away there.  How many times have we seen Beltran chastized for bunting in those situations?  
• Speaking of my #5 hitter, Jason Bay is really scuffling, Sunday's performance against the Orioles included.  Another 0-5 tonight, but it's his approach that is really troubling.  He's pressing early in counts, and swinging at more pitches out of the zone, and right now he just doesn't seem to have any confidence at all in what he's doing up there.  
• The Indians apparently are a completely terrible defensive team.  Carlos Santana has potential to be a star, Shin Soo Choo is one of the best and most underrated all around players in the game, and Hafner has been showing occassional bursts of the power that made him one of the most feared hitters in the game from 2005-2007.   Other than that, this team is just not good, and they should actually be applauded for being only 13 games under .500 this far into the season.  Let me just say that if the Mets can't find a away to sweep this team, it will be extremely disappointing.  
• K-Rod looked great as always tonight, and I'm not really sure how much longer I'm going to be able to watch him without a vomit bag.  God forbid the Mets stay in the hunt (as of this writing, the Braves are down 5-1, and the Mets may find themselves just a half game behind tomorrow), and we have to watch him in pressure situations in a pennant race.  I'm going to die.

Today was the last day of Gary Matthews Jr.'s prolific Met career, as he was released after a spectactular 11 hits on a .190 average and a whopping 1 RBI.  Yeah another solid role player added by master talent evaluator Omar Minaya.  I think my favorite thing about the Mets season so far hasn't been the winning, it's been Minaya not being allowed to speak in public.  Every time he opens his mouth, it gives me another reason to say being a Met fan sucks.